Fiscal Institutions and Fiscal Management in Korea: Evaluation and Improvement of Recent Changes

Abstract

It has been almost 10 years since Korean fiscal management system changed greatly as the government initiated four major fiscal reforms including Mid-term Fiscal Management Plan, Top-down Budgeting System, Performance Budgeting, and Digital Budget and Accounting System. While many previous researches focused on suggesting improvement plans for individual fiscal institutions and fiscal management systems, almost no research has provided comprehensive evaluation on all four fiscal reforms with objective and critical analysis.

This study suggests substantive improvement plans from critical point of view by analyzing domestic and foreign researches and collecting diverse opinions through written inquiries and in-depth interviews, by dividing the research focus into four topics including medium and long-term fiscal management, budget formulation procedures and decision making, evaluation and feedback on fiscal programs, and fiscal information management and disclosures. It also concentrates on providing analyses and policy alternatives on a large framework, instead of in a detailed or a minute fashion. Furthermore, this study cross-references the results on each topic and suggests ways to improve the fiscal system by reflecting links between the elements comprising fiscal institution and fiscal management system.