North Korea has a new budget and it’s full of fiscal hijinks
TOKYO — Imagine a national budget that reflects steady growth, gives a healthy boost to science and technology while reserving big slices of the overall pie to defence and social spending. It’s generous with infrastructure improvements, and is certain of unquestioning, unanimous approval in parliament.
Congratulations. You are now thinking like a North Korean economist.
North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly passed a budget with all of those features last week in an annual ritual reflecting the country’s conflicting desires to keep up appearances, especially for potential foreign investors, while obscuring even the most basic statistics needed to gauge its economic health.
The mysterious manner in which North Korea reports its budgets — and generally hides other economic indicators — is particularly frustrating as experts are now carefully scrutinizing whatever information they can get in an effort to understand the motives of leader Kim Jong Un as he prepares to hold his first summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in next week and U.S. President Donald Trump in late May or early June.