2. Data inconsistency
According to the law on public debt management
that came into effect on 1st January
2010, Vietnam’s public debt is defined as government
debt, government guaranteed debt,
and municipal debt. The total public debt can
also be divided into domestic and external
debt. (External debt is the amount of debts in
foreign currencies through bilateral or multilateral
arrangements, or through international
financial markets.) The fiscal situation and the
performance of the economy are closely related
through a number of vital macroeconomic
variables. A prolonged budget deficit will
finally result in a high level of internal public
debt. Meanwhile, external public debt is mainly
caused by the deficiency in national savings.
A rapid growth of public debt may limit the
effects of monetary, fiscal, and exchange rate
policies.
Government budget deficit is defined as the
gap between total expenditure and total revenue
in a given period. Meanwhile, public debt
is computed by accumulating these deficits
over many years. Statistics on Vietnam’s public
debt are very inconsistent. Different
sources report different data. In recent years,
data from the Ministry of Finance (MoF) of
Vietnam showed a surprising similarity
between actual and projected figures. In particular,
both the actual and projected state budget
deficit always fluctuated slightly around 5% of
GDP except for 2009 when Vietnam implemented
its stimulus package to escape from the
economic recession. However, the above figures
reported by the MoF were very different
from those by international agencies such as
the Asian Development Bank (ADB) or the
International Monetary Fund (IMF). For
example, in 2009 the budget deficit reported
by the MoF was 6.9%, which was far below
7.7% and 8.9% reported by the ADB and the
IMF respectively. Together with the differences
in budget deficit figures were the differences
in public debt statistics. Despite the
inconsistency, both the MoF and the IMF currently
reported an increasing trend of
Vietnam’s public debt to go over 55% of GDP.
The data inconsistencies mainly came from
Vietnam’s strange accounting norms which are
very different from international standards.
Firstly, they counted principal payments as
part of total expenditure and hence contributed
to the budget deficit. In contrast, some of the
expenditure funded by government bond
issuance, on projects in education, health,
water resources, etc., was not included in the
budget deficit. Furthermore, spending on big
and prolonged projects was recorded into the
state budget based on its disbursement, not on
the amount of bonds issued. The inconsistent
data caused some noise for market participants.
It also created hurdles for international
comparison, monitoring, and managing the
nation’s public debt.
There is a similarity between Vietnam’s statistics
on total external and external public
debt. Although there is a gap between figures
from different sources, all show a rapidly
increasing trend. At the end of 2008, total
external debt and external public debt were
around 30% and 25% of GDP respectively.
They have correspondingly jumped to over
40% and 30% of GDP by the end of 2010,
delivering a warning signal on public debt
management of Vietnam