Philippine E-Journals

Inflation and Public Debt Dynamics in ASEAN

Athakrit Thepmongkol | Yuthana Sethapramote

 

Abstract:

Abstract: This paper studies how inflation affects the debt dynamics focusing on six ASEAN countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Using projection data, we perform simulations of debt dynamics under various inflation policies. It results that Vietnam has the highest ability of inflating debt, while the Philippines is lastly ranked. Moreover, the optimal inflation rate for each member country and also the common policy rate for ASEAN integration are calculated under additional debt management motive. We found that if the ASEAN happened to use the common inflation policy rate, Malaysia and the Philippines would not be much affected as their individual optimal rates are close to the common rate, while Indonesia and Singapore would suffer from withstanding the common inflation rate far from their own optimal levels.