地方政府与融资平台:统筹发展与安全

Local Governments and LGFVs:Integrating Development and Security

地方政府借助融资平台举债融资是突破传统财政制度和资金约束以筹集建设资金的重要方式,但容易累积财政金融风险。为统筹发展与安全,本文尝试理顺地方政府与融资平台之间的关系。首先,从微观层面刻画融资平台游离状态,以经济学视角跟踪界定2019—2021年融资平台,发现其数量总体上呈小幅减少趋势。融资平台有息债务趋势特征凸显出了金融部门“借新还旧”稳金融政策、新冠疫情期间债券支持政策以及隐性债务治理政策的效果。进一步研究发现,城投债结构化发行,推高了融资成本,嵌套多层杠杆,容易造成风险暴露和集聚;非标债务定向融资模式,不仅进一步推高了融资成本,而且容易将社会风险嵌入财政风险。然后,深刻阐述地方政府与融资平台之间的纠缠关系,包括工具依赖、风险积聚和转型挑战,如何消除地方政府在投融资过程中对融资平台的工具依赖是重塑二者关系的突破口。最后,围绕该突破口,尝试通过三类规范合作、政府信用与公司信用有效分离以及引入市场竞争机制,在发展中推进融资平台市场化转型。

Debt financing by local governments with the help of f Local Government Financing Vehicles(LGFVs)is an important way to break through the traditional fiscal system and financial constraints in order to mobilize construction funds,but it is prone to accumulating fiscal and financial risks.In order to integrate development and safety,this paper tries to reconstruct the relationship between local governments and LGFVs.First of all,the wandering state of LGFVs is portrayed from the micro level,and LGFVs in 2019—2021 are tracked and defined from an economic perspective,and the number of LGFVs has a slight decreasing trend in general.The trend characteristics of interest-bearing debt of LGFVs highlight the effects of the financial sector’s“borrowing new loans to repay old”policy,the bond support policy during the COVID-19,and the implicit debt management policy.Further research finds that the structured issuance of municipal bonds has pushed up financing costs and nested multiple layers of leverage,which is prone to risk exposure and aggregation;and the targeted financing model of non-standard debt not only further pushes up financing costs,but also tends to embed social risks into fiscal risks.Then,the entangled relationship between local governments and LGFVs is deeply elaborated,including tool dependence,risk accumulation and transformation challenges.The breakthrough lies in how to eliminate the tool dependence of local governments on LGFVs in the process of investment and financing.Finally,around the breakthrough,attempts are made to promote the market-oriented transformation of LGFVs in development through three types of standardized cooperation,effective separation of government credit and corporate credit,and competition mechanism.