Sovereign Assets And Liabilities Management

This volume, edited by David Folkerts-Landau and Marcel Cassard, consists of papers presented at a conference held in Hong Kong SAR that was hosted by the IMF and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. It focuses on a wide range of issues confronting policymakers in managing their sovereign assets and liabilities in a world of mobile capital and integrated capital markets. Topics include public debt management strategy, central bank reserves management, technical and quantitive aspects of risk management, and credit costs and borrowing capacity in optimizing debt management. The papers draw on experiences of policymakers and private sector participants actively involved in formulating and implementing debt and reserves policy.

Ample natural resource revenues create both opportunities and challenges for a sovereign to transform its natural resources into well-managed financial assets. Hence, inter-temporal smoothing of revenue and consumption/investment moves to the center stage of macroeconomic policies. The questions arising from natural resource wealth accumulation are becoming more pressing for many countries, given the need to achieve intergenerational equity in a context where commodity prices may not continue their upward trajectory of the past decade. Addressing these questions requires a flexible sovereign asset-liability management (SALM) framework that integrates various macroeconomic and financial trade-offs with the aim of containing financial risk to the sovereign balance sheet. The framework and policy advice aims to guide policymakers across different institutions in weighing those trade-offs.

Country practices towards managing financial risks on a sovereign balance sheet continue to evolve. Each crisis period, and its legacy on sovereign balance sheets, reaffirms the need for strengthening financial risk management. This paper discusses some salient features embedded in in the current generation of sovereign asset and liability management (SALM) approaches, including objectives, definitions of relevant assets and liabilities, and methodologies used in obtaining optimal SALM outcomes. These elements are used in developing an analytical SALM framework which could become an operational instrument in formulating asset management and debtor liability management strategies at the sovereign level. From a portfolio perspective, the SALM approach could help detect direct and derived sovereign risk exposures. It allows analyzing the financial characteristics of the balance sheet, identifying sources of costs and risks, and quantifying the correlations among these sources of risk. The paper also outlines institutional requirements in implementing an SALM framework and seeks to lay the ground for further policy and analytical work on this topic.

This paper provides an overview of the strategic and operational issues as well as institutional challenges, related to the implementation of the Sovereign Asset and Liability Management (SALM) approach. Application of an SALM framework allows the authorities to identify and monitor sovereign exposure mismatches; increase resilience to foreign currency and interest rate risks; and thus, strengthen financial stability; and implement more cost-effective management of the public-sector debt. The analysis is based on emerging market (EM) countries and illustrated by the experience of Uruguay, using data as of end-2017.

In an environment of sizable and volatile capital flows and integrated international capital markets, large and unhedged net external sovereign liabilities expose countries to swings in international asset prices and to potential speculative currency attacks. The paper argues that an essential step in reducing emerging market vulnerability to such external shocks is to reform the institutional arrangements governing asset and liability management policies, so as to promote a transparent, publicly accountable, and professional incentive structure.

In an environment of sizable and volatile capital flows and integrated international capital markets, large and unhedged net external sovereign liabilities expose countries to swings in international asset prices and to potential speculative currency attacks. The paper argues that an essential step in reducing emerging market vulnerability to such external shocks is to reform the institutional arrangements governing asset and liability management policies, so as to promote a transparent, publicly accountable, and professional incentive structure.

Recent years have shown an increase in development and acceptance of quantitative methods for asset and liability management strategies. This book presents state of the art quantitative decision models for three sectors: pension funds, insurance companies and banks, taking into account new regulations and the industries risks.

Costa Rica has embarked on an ambitious reform of its public debt management function and has made significant progress to date. On the institutional front, it includes the establishment of the Commission for Sovereign Assets and Liabilities for the coordination of public debt management, cash management, and financial programming of the budget. An IMF Technical Assistance mission visited San Jose in November 2022 to assist the Ministry of Finance in preparation of a framework for Sovereign Asset and Liability Management. This note summarizes the mission’s findings and recommendations.