Posted May. 07, 2001 08:54,
The Ministry of Finance and Economy recently issued Economic white paper 2000, which reports the economic policies and situations of last year. The ministry blows its own trumpet there.
The Ministry of Finance and Economy praised itself as it had increased the stability and the transparency of Korean economic system by restructuring of the 4 major sectors, eliminating its structural fragility accumulated for decades. The Ministry emphasized that it had guaranteed the minimum standard of the people’s living and opened up a new era of Pan-Korean economy in accordance with the sign on the four agreements between the South and the North. It also added that the economic growth rate had maintained high, the price had been stabilized, and the foreign exchange holdings had increased.
It is unnecessary to ridicule the government’s self evaluation. However, besides the disputes about the achievement of the restructuring, it lacks the necessary self reflections on its administration.
The paper in fact admitted that the fundamentals of Korean economy is weak and requires much more efforts. But it attributed all the reasons of the aggravated economic condition to the collective egotism.
The most serious problem of this paper is on its no mention about the deterioration of economic policies by the logic of politicians. Especially, the government itself contributed to the delay of restructuring by throwing out economic policies based on its popularism for the 4.13 general election last year.
This paper reminds us of the Mini economic white paper(1998) of Japanese Economic Planning Service, which admitted the governments failure in properly managing the crisis after the bubble economy. The paper pointed out that the government contributed tremendously to increase the side effects of the bubble economy by delaying the problem of insolvent bonds of banking industries.
The government might feel repulsive to the comparison with Japanese government which had recovered the lost 10 years. However, it is necessary for the government to reflect it past policies and to make sure of no more misadministration instead of concealing it.