농업부문 재정투융자 성과분석

Abstract

이 연구는 농업·농촌 부문에 대한 재정투융자사업의 성과와 영향을 종합적으로 파악하고자 시도되었다. 그동안 논쟁의 중심에 있었던 농림재정 규모의 적절성에 대한 함의를 분석하고, 생산성 향상과 농업자본의 축적, 농림재정과 농업생산 간의 관계를 계량적으로 분석하여 총량적인 관점에서 객관적 판단 근거를 제시하고자 하였다. 총량분석으로 파악할 수 없는 사업부문별 성과에 대해서는 기존의 연구성과를 종합하여 판단하고자 하였다. 마지막으로 성과평가의 객관성과 효과성을 높이기 위한 평가지표의 발굴을 위해 사례 사업부문을 선정하고 심층분석을 시도하였다.

Research Background In the food, agriculture and forestry sector, fiscal investment of 2012 expanded 1.5 times more than 2001. The budget increased to KRW 18.1 trillion (5.6%) in 2012 from KRW 11.3 trillion (8.3%) in 2001. Its proportion has continuously decreased in the 2000s. However, the absolute amount has grown, which causes controversial issues about the proper size. On the one hand, the real growth rate in the food, agriculture and forestry sector is quite fluctuating and remains at 1%, triggering criticism over the excessive budget investment. On the other hand, there is an opinion if the government reduces fiscal investment, the agricultural sector will lose their power to overcome difficulties. With these debates, it is necessary to review the proper size of fiscal investment and its effect.

Research Method For this study, three methods are applied. First, an index for international comparison is provided in order to decide the proper size of fiscal investment in the agricultural sector. Second, the econometric method is used for analyzing effects of the total amount of investment in the sector. Third, on the individual categories’ fiscal investment, the general performance review is provided and issues related to each category are drawn. For the “strengthening agriculture” category, the in-depth performance review is presented using input, output, and outcome indices.

Conclusion and Implication of Research Several indices are used to decide the proper budget size in the agriculture sector, such as the sector’s proportion in the total budget and the budget proportion against the proportion of GDP. Those simple indices are not appropriate since it can exaggerate results. When the budget is adjusted except the one for Rural Welfare and Food and Nutrition related projects, it is found that the Korean government less invests in the agriculture sector than Japan and spends similarly to the United States that invests much in nutritional food supplements. To measure the agriculture competitiveness, total factor productivity (TFP) is used as an index. As a result, TFP contribution toward total output is much higher in the agriculture sector than in other industries. In particular, TFP contribution increased from 34.58 in the 1980s to 43.32 in the 1990s and rose to 123.21 in the 2000s. In the same vein, when it comes to its accumulation of capital, Korea has significantly higher productivity (1.94) than other countries. This also reflects that agricultural production has expanded thanks to restructuring and improved market efficiency, not just capital accumulation. These indices have the limit in that the performances do not result from only fiscal investment. The quantitative analysis was conducted by using the ECM model in order to examine the effect of total fiscal input. According to the result, an input of KRW 1 leads to more than KRW 2 of positive effect on average. A large decrease has been witnessed since the beginning of the 2000s. In the environment that imports increase dramatically and the rural society is aged seriously, the government not just expects a growth effect of expanded spending but takes into account various facets including improved welfare, development in agricultural areas, export expansion, and income preservation. In chapter 4 and 5, the result shows that the policies for “income preservation and management stability” were implemented as planned. However, it seems to be hard to succeed in stabilizing the farm-household income. Furthermore, the government’s performance needs to be adjusted. In “retail improvement” and “rural area development” categories, the short-term management was well carried out. In the category of “strengthening agriculture”, the performance was generally good according to output-outcome indices.

Researchers: Mee-bok Kim, Seong-Jae Park, Ji-Eun Lim Research Period: 2013. 1 〜 2013. 12 E-mail address: mbkim@krei.re.kr