Gov`t Did Not Make Public Announce of Evaluation Result

The government is eliciting criticism as it did not make public the government`s evaluations on 57 public pension funds, which manage 220 trillion won.

Ministry of Planning and Budget announced yesterday that it will report the `review result on funds operation in 2000` to the cabinet meeting and submit it to the National Assembly in September 2nd.

However, the Ministry of Planning and Budget did not make public the grades of 57 funds, evaluated by the fund operation review team (team chief Prof. Kim Jung-Soo of Kyunghee University International Graduate School) based on 14 evaluation indices. Evaluation indices are the measurements of the present condition of the operation of each fund and management. There are five grades depending on work performance.

The government announced the fund operation performance last August for the first time in 40 years since the fund system was introduced in 1961. However, as it was critiqued that the operation of funds amounting to 197 trillion won was loose, and management method was primitive, the government said that it would announce the rank of funds based on a concrete evaluation indices. Breaking the promise, without making announcement of the fund ranking, the government announced `good fund that is in its improvement` and `fund that requires additional improvement`. Thus, the government is critiqued that its evaluation method is too generous.

According to the Ministry of Planning and Budget and the review committee of fund operation, 57 funds still remain unchanged in their asset operation, and their business operation of funds tend to simply expand, without focusing on core businesses.

Especially, with regard to supply of the financial resources, it was pointed out that the funds established the financial resources by issuing lotteries and collecting allotments, and decided the business size according to the amount of financial resources.

A fund review member said, ``I heard that although the review team evaluated each fund in detail and gave grades, the government will not make public the evaluation result, and submit the documents only to the National Assembly in September 2nd. When the government announced the evaluation on the fund operation performance last year, it created a great stir in our society. Because of this, the government seemed to make a relatively conservative announcement this year.``

Park In-Chul, director of the budget management at the Ministry of Planning and Budget said, ``while the government wrote the report centering around the problems last year, it analyzed both strengths and weaknesses simultaneously this year.``

yhchoi65@donga.com