Chief Joo Young-jin of the National Assembly Budget Office led a delegation from his office to the 4th Meeting of OECD Parliamentary Budget Officials in Paris, France, as well as visited Spain from Feb. 22 to March 2. 

Members of the delegation learned about the execution of parliamentary budgets in OECD member countries while attending the meeting, including measures to cope with budgetary crises, and attended a session on talks on the setting up of an independent parliamentary budget office in OECD member countries.

The delegation also called on the lower house of the Spanish parliament in Madrid and the Ministry of Financial Adminis-tration and discussed cooperation between Spain and Korea to cope with financial crises. They also traveled to Barcelona to meet with Korean businessmen attending the Mobile World Congress.

The 4th Meeting of OECD Parliamentary Budget Officials, which took place from Feb. 23-24 at the OECD Headquarters in Paris, was designed to take up issues related to state budgets at parliamentary levels and jointly share information.

The gathering has been considered so significant that the EU wanted to recommend to its member countries the establishment of independent expert parliamentary budget offices in their respective countries to raise the health of the treasuries of those countries as many of them are faced with financial crises.

The international meeting was attended by not only 29 OECD member countries’ representatives, but also Brazil, a non-OECD member, which dispatched a delegation, as well as the IMF and World Bank, the international organizations and financial experts, to make the gathering bigger than ones held before.

The first day of the two-day meeting dealt with measures by OECD member countries to cope with the financial crisis triggered by the EU’s debt crisis as well as setting up parliamentary budget offices.

Eckhard Wurzel of the Economics Department of the OECD informed the meeting of member nations’ debts ratios versus their GDPs and government budget constraints, along with the pace of budget reductions and its effects on total demand as well as the outlook for budget reduction ratios and changes as shown in a study. He showed how properly paced budget reductions can achieve balanced budgets, as opposed to unconditional budget re-ductions.

Many member countries talked about the necessity of the establishment of inde-pendent parliamentary expert budget offices in their countries with some introducing the setup of their parliamentary budget offices.

Portugal, for example, set up its committee for public finance a week before the OECD Parliamentary Budget Officials Meeting, which helped the participants understand the growing need among member countries to set up independent parliamentary budget offices.

Xavier Debrun of the IMF said parliamentary budget offices can not have the power to control government budget expenditure, but if they properly manage their power, they can size up where public opinions stand, which can lead to discussions on the reform of government budget governance, thus playing the role of not only watching how budgets are spent, but also how its systems can be reformed.

The second day was spent presenting ideas on how effectively parliamentary budget offices can be managed and discussing the issue. Bob Sunshine of the U.S. Congressional Budget Office said the CBO’s relations with the media is sensitive, but it is best to maintain cooperative relations with them to the extent that correct information can be delivered to the public.

In this regard, Chief Joo introduced the National Assembly Budget Office’s close relations with the media, ensuring strong confidence in the role of the National Assembly Budget Office in its activities including publishing its analytical reports on government budget expenditures and economic indicators.

The OECD unveiled its 23 principles under seven major subjects in connection with the request for the establishment of independent parliamentary budget offices at the Stockholm OECD Parliamentary Budget Officials Meeting and the participants went over the details of each principle and exchanged their opinions on them.

Mitchell O’ Brien of the World Bank said the parliamentary budget offices of each member country of the OECD have already been engaged in not only checking the legality of government expenditures, but also their effectiveness and economic rationality, and can expand and maximize the synergy in tie-ups with independent parliamentary budget offices.

 The 4th Meeting of Parliamentary Budget Officials had expert parliamentary budget officials gathered at a meeting to collect ideas to solve the financial crisis set off by the EU debt crisis.

The participants of the two-day meeting in Paris announced the bu-dgetary support organi-zation’s structure, fun-ction, and results in the way of stressing the need for an independent budgetary organiz-ation and independent budget expenditure regulations. Particularly, they agreed on the need for progress toward independent budgetary principles, citing various examples from each OECD member nation.

Portugal’s setup of an independent parliamentary budget office to fulfill the need to strengthen oversight of parliam-entary budget expenditures boosted the OECD member countries’ concerns for such an organization, with the CBO of the United States and Korea’s National Assembly Budget Office as models.

The parliamentary budget offices have drawn the attention of participants at the parliamentary budget officials meeting with regard to their roles of supervising the execution of government budgets and informing the public of their analyses of various media reports on government budgets and the reform of budgetary policies.

Following the parliamentary budget officials meeting in Paris, the Korean delegation traveled to Madrid to gain an insight into Spain’s budget system and government financial conditions by calling on Marta Fernandez Curras, vice minister for budget expenditure for the Ministry of Financial Administration and the director-general of the budget bureau. They said the finance ministry has been trying to maintain the total annual budget deficit to 3 percent of GDP until 2013, as recommended by the European Commission of the EU.

But the Spanish government has been unable to cut the deficit to that level and is in talks with the EU on the matter. The newly-formed Spanish parliament, following the recent parliamentary election, has been unable to pass the 2012 national budget and the government is still referring to the 2011 budget, as the 2012 budget was only put up for parliamentary approval in March.

The delegation made a stop in Barcelona to meet with Korean businessmen participating in the Mobile World Congress held from Feb. 27 to March 1, which displayed the direction of the future development of smartphones and new technologies in the IT industry. Korean IT firms, with support from KOTRA, operated their own booth to introduce their IT equipment to the world.

At the Paris parliamentary budget officials meeting, the delegation learned that every nation in the world has been at work securing their economies from the impact of the financial crisis stemming from the EU debt crisis, thus demonstrating the need for independent professional financial expert organizations like the National Assembly Budget Office.

The National Assembly Budget Office was set up in 2003 and has become a successful model for an independent parliamentary budget office. 

From Spain’s budget crisis, the delegation realized the National Assembly Budget Office should redouble its efforts to be a “guard” for the livelihood of all Koreans and a “guide” for national policies.