新興市場是否忘了結構性改革
You often hear economists and investors talk these days about the ‘broken growth model’ in emerging markets. It isn’t a terribly precise term but it’s easy to see what people mean. The problem in EM is that none of the three possible sources of GDP growth – exports, or public domestic spending, or private domestic spending – have much going for them.
如今你經常聽到經濟學家和投資者談論新興市場“增長模式破產”。這不是一個特別準確的術語，但我們不難看出人們所指的意思。新興市場的問題在於，國內生產總值(GDP)的三個可能增長源頭——出口、公共國內支出和私人國內消費——沒有一個是強勁的。
Exports from EM are hobbled by a collapse in the growth of global trade and the related fall in world commodity prices. Public spending growth is weak because many governments are too nervous to loosen fiscal policy, fearing a loss of sovereign creditworthiness at a time when the outlook for capital inflows isn’t encouraging. And private domestic spending is hampered by the fact that credit markets in many countries are in ‘post-boom’ mode: neither domestic lenders nor borrowers have much in the way of risk appetite.
全球貿易增速劇減以及相關的世界大宗商品價格下跌，重創了新興市場的出口。公共支出增長很弱，原因在於許多政府過於緊張、不敢放鬆財政政策，擔心在資本流入前景不妙之際喪失主權信譽。私人國內消費受到了許多國家的信貸市場處於‘後繁榮’狀態的抑制：國內的貸款機構和借款者兩方面都沒有多少風險偏好。
All this helps to explain why emerging markets GDP growth, on average, should fall below 4 per cent this year for the first time since 2001.
這一切有助於解釋，爲何今年的新興市場平均GDP增速應該會自2001年以來首次降到4%以下。
Faced with this state of affairs, you might think countries would be falling over themselves to reform their economies: reducing barriers to economic activity, de-clogging product markets, reducing regulation, making additional effort to seek new inflows of foreign direct investment. Yet most economists and investors with any knowledge of emerging markets would only be able to name two countries which have a definable reform strategy that is being more or less implemented: India and Mexico.
面對這種局面，你或許會以爲，新興市場國家將競相推行經濟改革：降低經濟活動門檻，疏通產品市場，減少監管，加倍努力尋求新的外國直接投資(FDI)。不過，大多數了解新興市場的經濟學家和投資者只能列出兩個國傢俱有比較明確的改革戰略、而且或多或少在執行戰略：印度和墨西哥。
Why are so few countries embracing reform? To see why, you need to think back to the early 2000s, when emerging economies were just, well, emerging from two decades of intermittent financial crises. Looking back on the grim experiences of the 1980s and 1990s – crises in Latin America, Asia, Russia, Turkey and others – the biggest question at the start of the 2000s was ‘what on earth is it that’s making developing countries so susceptible to crisis?’ And the answer seemed clear. The problem in emerging markets was overwhelmingly described as a problem to do with weak sovereign balance sheets: too much public debt, too much of it denominated in foreign currencies, and too much of it needing to be repaid too soon.
爲何擁抱改革的國家如此之少？若要知道原因，你需要回想一下本世紀初的情況，那時新興經濟體剛剛走出持續20年斷斷續續的金融危機。回憶一下上世紀80和90年代的可怕經歷吧——拉美、亞洲、俄羅斯和土耳其等地的危機——本世紀初的最大問題是，“究竟是什麼因素導致發展中國家這麼容易爆發危機？”答案似乎顯而易見。新興市場的問題被多數人描述爲與主權資產負債表薄弱有關：公共債務太高，其中以外幣計價的債務比例太高，需要很快償付的比例也太高。
Structural reform was certainly part of the debate, but not too central to it.
那時，結構改革當然是辯論的議題之一，但並非核心議題。
This analysis spurred action: policymakers in developing countries made strenuous efforts to strengthen their public sector balance sheets during the 2000s: reducing debt/GDP ratios, cutting the amount owed in dollars, accumulating foreign reserves and extending the maturity profile of government bonds. Indeed, the 2000s saw a dramatic improvement in the health of sovereign balance sheets: the average debt/GDP ratio in EM fell from over 60 per cent in the early 2000s to just over 40 per cent nowadays.
有關主權資產負債表薄弱的分析結果引發了行動：在本世紀頭10年，發展中國家的政策制定者在強化公共部門的資產負債表方面下了很大功夫：降低債務/GDP比率，減少美元債務數量，積累外匯儲備，從總體上延長政府債券的年期。的確，在本世紀頭10年裏，主權資產負債表的健康狀況大爲好轉：新興市場的平均債務/GDP比率從21世紀初的60%以上，降低到如今的略高於40%。
That felt like enough, since the 2000s wrapped these countries in the warm embrace of rapid Chinese growth, plenty of external financing, and unusually strong import growth in the developed world. So, structural reform was crowded out by an intellectual emphasis on the central importance of balance sheets, aided by an exceptionally friendly world economy that made EM policymakers feel that whatever it was they were doing, it was working.
這給人的感覺是足夠了，因爲在本世紀頭10年裏，這些國家極大地受益於中國快速增長、充足外部資金和異常強勁的發達世界進口增長。結構性改革被排擠掉了，因爲學術界強調資產負債表的核心重要性，而極其有利的世界經濟促使新興市場的政策制定者覺得，無論他們在做什麼，他們的行動都很靈驗。
Now that the global economic temperature is much colder, what we’re learning is that having a strong sovereign balance sheet is at best a necessary – but not a sufficient – condition for enjoying stable growth. A business climate that supports animal spirits is needed too, more so today than any time in the recent past.
現在既然全球經濟溫度低了很多，我們學到的教益是，擁有強大的主權資產負債表充其量是享有穩定增長的必要條件，而不是充分條件。還需要一種支持“動物精神”的商業氛圍，與近年任何時候相比，如今更是如此。
But it takes time for countries to reach that conclusion. Look at Mexico, for example. One reason that Mexicans ended up electing a President in 2012 who was committed to proper structural reform – in energy, telecoms, education and labour above all – was that its economic performance had been dismal for over 30 years.
但各國需要一定的時間才能得出這個結論。以墨西哥爲例。2012年，墨西哥人選出了一位承諾認真推行結構性改革（最重要的是能源、電信、教育以及勞動力市場改革）的總統，原因之一在於，該國的經濟表現令人沮喪已有30餘年了。
The 1980s were ‘lost’ as a result of a debt crisis; the 1990s were overshadowed by China’s 1993 devaluation and the subsequent Tequila crisis in late 1994; and in the 2000s Mexico was one of the few countries in the developing world that failed to benefit from China’s rise, since China’s membership of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2001 allowed its exporters to capture market share from, above all, Mexico. Between 1980 and 2010, emerging economies as a whole enjoyed GDP growth of 4.5 per cent on average. Mexico rubbed along with just 2.6 per cent. And it was this persistently weak economic performance which gave the country plenty of time to come up with a diagnosis, and elect a President aiming to do something about it (not that his effort has been an unqualified success).
一場債務危機使墨西哥“失去了”上世紀80年代；90年代，墨西哥受到1993年中國人民幣貶值和1994年末特基拉危機的影響；本世紀頭10年，墨西哥是未能受益於中國崛起的少數發展中國家之一，因爲2001年中國加入世貿組織(WTO)使得中國出口商從其他國家那裏奪取了市場份額，首當其衝的便是墨西哥。1980年至2010年間，新興經濟體整體的平均GDP增速達到4.5%。墨西哥則只有2.6%。正是這種持續疲弱的經濟表現，讓墨西哥舉國上下有很多時間得出診斷結果，最終選舉出一位有意採取相應行動的總統（當然他的努力也並未取得絕對成功）。
Let’s hope that it doesn’t take too many countries a generation to discover the need for structural reforms, or the ‘growth model’ may stay broken for a depressingly long time.
我們希望，不要有太多的國家需要一代人的時間才能發現結構性改革的必要性，否則的話，當前“增長模式”或許會失靈很久。
But here’s a dilemma. One of the gravest structural deficiencies in EM is poor infrastructure. Yet improving this will almost certainly require funding from the public sector. So countries may find themselves with a difficult choice: is it better to maintain as strong a public balance sheet as possible in order to keep your country’s borrowing costs low? Or is it worth tolerating higher public debt levels in order to finance infrastructure? The outlook for EM growth would be a lot more rosy if there was an easy answer to that question.
但這裏有個兩難。新興市場的最嚴重結構性缺陷之一是基礎設施薄弱。但是，改善基礎設施將幾乎肯定需要公共部門資金。所以，這些國家或許會發現自己面臨一個棘手選擇：維持儘可能強大的公共部門資產負債表、以便把國家的借款成本保持在低水平？還是忍受更高的公共債務水平、以便爲完善基礎設施提供資金支持？如果這個問題有輕鬆的答案，新興市場增長的前景就將美好得多。
