Public sector should improve transparency, debt control: minister

South Korea's public sector should double up its efforts to improve its business health by increasing management transparency and keeping debt under control, the finance minister said Wednesday.

"We hope that the public sector institutions will raise the trust of people by enhancing their transparency and push for systematic management, including debt analysis," Bahk Jae-wan told a crisis management meeting with other key policymakers.

In particular, he cited the concerns raised by the global credit ratings agency Moody's on debt increase of the public sector here.

Public sector agencies have been cited as one of the key areas that the government of President Lee Myung-bak is pushing to reform, as they are frequently under fire for lax management and generous benefits to employees.

Bahk said that the government will submit a mid and long-term financial management plan for public institutions to the National Assembly. The plan includes a five-year financial management objective for the public sector.

Under the plan later unveiled by the government, 41 public agencies with assets of 2 trillion won (US$1.79 billion) or more drew up their financial management plans focused on keeping their debt levels under control through asset sale, cost-cutting and other "self-rescue" efforts.

Despite the efforts, the government expected that the debt ratio of the public agencies will continue to rise until 2013, but it will start to drop after the year and stabilize at around 209 percent in 2016, a similar level seen in 2011. For this year, the ratio stood at 222.1 percent. (Yonhap News)