Concealed national debt

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Hidden government debt is a borrowing that is initiated by a government budget and is economically attributable to it, but is not reported in this budget. The total government debt is the sum of the open and hidden national debt .

Concealed national debt arises e.g. B. by

  • Budget outsourcing in state-owned companies that are not part of the state sector. Companies become carriers of hidden national debt if they are formally independent, but economically fully or largely dependent on the allocations of the outsourcing budget,
  • Non-disclosure of uncertain liabilities in the state asset account (e.g. pension liabilities, liabilities to the pension insurance due to non-insurance benefits),
  • Public-private partnership projects (e.g. the cost of introducing the toll before assuming the debt),
  • Administrative debts are not reported while financial debts are reported,
  • Leasing transactions.

Examples of hidden national debt in Germany were the Treuhandanstalt and the Inherited Debt Fund .

The motive for hidden national debt is, in addition to the desire to make the use of debt for certain purposes clear, the intention to make the national debt appear less than it really is.

See also

literature

  • Christian Smekal : Concealed National Debt - Escape from the Public Budget? In: WISU , Vol. 25, No. 1, Düsseldorf 1996, pp. 67-73.
  • Sibylle Wagener: On the correct recording of government debt In: Wirtschaftsdienst , 85th year, No. 8, 2005, pp. 522-526 ( PDF; 54 kB ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reinhard Fischer: Hidden State Debt to Finance German Unity., Dissertation, Innsbruck 1997 (PDF; 1.5 MB) .