In Thailand under Thaksin, a similar kind of inattention to appropriate data seemed to
have occurred again, this time on the fiscal side. The Thaksin government often claimed that
the fiscal position of the public sector was very healthy. It cited the fact that the budget was
never much in deficit and the ratio of public sector debt to GDP had declined from 57% at the
end of fiscal year 2000 (September 2000) to only around 46% at the end of fiscal year 2005
(September 2005).
The situation was, however, much more complicated. Many of the Thaksin’s
government policies, both populist or otherwise, have been carried out through non-budgetary
means, so they do not show up in the traditional budgetary or public debt measures. If one
only pays attention to the normal budget and public debt figures, it would be like looking at
foreign reserves only in relation to the number of months of imports like before the crisis. This
would be dangerous. There are many reasons why one needs to look beyond the regular
budget and public debt figures.
First, the cycle of grassroots and SME expanded lending and debt forgiveness as
discussed above is likely to create substantial contingent liability for the government
eventually. This has not been factored into the official public debt figures. In addition, in
developing various mass-transit projects, promises have been made to the public that fares
will be very low; for example, only 15 baht ($US0.40) per journey. It is most likely that if this
were really the case, a substantial subsidy will be required to keep the system going once
built. These subsidies again do not appear anywhere in the projected public debt.
There were also cases of creative financing, or creative accounting depending on how
one looks at it. Some major investment projects were done through securitization and the use
of special purpose vehicles (SPV) in a way that committed future liabilities did not show up as
public debt. A good example is a project to develop a new government administrative center
in the north of Bangkok. An SPV was set up with nominal paid-up capital, which is more than
50% privately owned so that it was not a state enterprise. The SPV issued bonds to raise money to construct and develop the administrative center. These bonds were backed by a
long-term lease given to a government department with guaranteed rental. These rental
payments (stretching to more than 30 years) clearly were committed liabilities of the
government, yet they were not included in the public debt figures.
The above indicates that one needs to be very careful in judging the fiscal or quasifiscal
position of the country. The way many policies were carried out under the Thaksin
government tends to hide the true future liabilities of the government. If true lessons have
been learned from the crisis, this should not have happened. The best approach is to be very
transparent about what is happening, what are the commitments and what are the risks. If
government policies are shrouded by obscurity, there is a clear danger that before the risks to
economic stability can be clearly seen, the problems might have already become too big to be
easily handled.