재정여력 추정을 통한 한국 재정의 금융위기 대응 능력 평가

When the possibility of a financial crisis is detected, the government often acts as the “guarantor of last resort” to promote economic stability. However, if a serious economic shock occurs, there is a risk that a significant portion of the government’s guarantee will become insolvent, and the insolvent government guarantee will inevitably be transferred to the government’s fiscal burden. This study estimates Korea’s fiscal space and conducts simulations for various hypothetical financial crisis situations to evaluate the Korean government’s ability to respond to crises and derive fiscal policy implications. First, we look at sovereign debt statistics and credit statistics for public enterprises and policy finance. According to the data, the scale of debt of non-financial public corporations and policy finance-related credit that are not officially included in national debt is found to be quite large. The total debt size of non-financial public enterprises amounts to 17.4% of GDP as of 2021, and as of 2020, the size of policy finance loans was found to amount to a total of 56.6%, including the banking sector (30.2%) and the non-banking sector (26.4%). Debt arising from these public enterprises and policy finance is not included in the official sovereign debt, but the problem is that if the debt in these sectors becomes insolvent, it can cause a burden on the government and be converted directly or indirectly into government debt. Next, a dynamic general equilibrium model is constructed to calculate Korea’s fiscal space. Then a hypothetical crisis scenario is set up, and a simulation experiment is conducted using the model. Considering the weakening growth due to demographic changes and the high increase in fiscal expenditures, Korea’s fiscal space is found to be not high at about 120% of GDP. In addition, if the maximum amount of fiscal space is exhausted, a high income tax rate increase is necessary, and as a result, key macro variables such as output, consumption, employment, and investment are significantly worsened. The simulation shows that the government debt has the capacity to respond in the event of a hypothetical crisis, such as the occurrence of non-performing loans on a scale similar to the 1997 foreign exchange crisis or the large-scale insolvency of public energy companies. However, if such a large-scale crisis occurs, the fiscal space is likely to be almost exhausted, suggesting the need to manage public sector debt that has the risk of being accidentally converted to sovereign debt in addition to official government debt. Based on the above analysis, it is judged that there is a high need to manage public enterprise debt and policy finance credit that are not included in the official government debt at a level equivalent to the government debt. Accordingly, this paper presents two major policy alternatives. First, we suggest a plan to strengthen management by incorporating public enterprise debt into official state-guaranteed debt and codifying legal guarantees. Once included in the state-guaranteed debt, it will receive a legal guarantee for the debt from the government, but there will be restrictions on the operation of the debt, such as having to submit a national guaranteed debt management plan for the next five years to the National Assembly every year. Currently, the debt of public enterprises is not legally guaranteed by the government in most cases, but the market tends to believe that an implicit payment guarantee will be provided by the government. Instead of formalizing payment guarantees at all, it is conceivable to strengthen the management of potential soverign debt by including public enterprise debt in state-guaranteed debt that is managed at a similar level to national debt. Second, we suggest to establish a new organization to comprehensively manage the total amount of public enterprise debt and policy finance credit, which are hidden national debt, and introduce total volume regulations. Although it is very important to appropriately manage the size of debt for each institution individually by considering the fundamental status and profitability, it is also important to comprehensively manage factors that can be transferred to the government’s burden in the event of an emergency, in terms of securing financial soundness and strengthening crisis response capabilities. Establishing a new management entity that can manage the total amount of public sector debt and impose restrictions on debt management to ensure that the size of public sector debt does not exceed a reasonable level to the extent that individual organizations can perform their duties will help manage hidden fiscal risk factors.