Economic Challenges And The Potential Threat Of A Debt Trap In Asia

Abstract

This study attempts to investigate the potential for public debt traps in countries in Asia, especially Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka, and Timor Leste. This study employs a vector panel model using secondary data from annual Reports in a quantitative manner from the world bank. This study investigates samples from 12 Asian countries, namely Sri Lanka, Timor Leste, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Thailand, Brunei Darussalam, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia. we use an annual research time period from 1990 to 2020. We found that economic growth, consumption growth, government spending, total debt arising from bond sales, and interest rates in Sri Lanka, Timor Leste, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Thailand, Brunei Darussalam, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia influence each other significantly. This shows that public debt has an impact on almost all lines of the economic sector. When the public debt is not balanced by the real sector, which is represented by economic growth, consumption growth, and government spending, it will become a threat to the economy when public debt payments are due and state revenues are insufficient to make payments and the real sector is not strong enough to support cash outflows. As a result of the payment of a public debt, there is the potential for a crisis as well as interest rates which have an impact on public debt, where the higher the interest rate, the more burdensome the real sector will be in providing compensation for loans received at the specified interest rate.