Exportgarantien sind eines der wenigen verbliebenen Instrumente der aktiven Wirtschaftspolitik zur Förderung des Außenhandels.
Internationale Vereinbarungen beschränken seit 1996 die Vergabe von Garantien auf nichtmarktfähige Risken. Deshalb stagnierte
das Garantievolumen in den letzten Jahren. Die positiven Auswirkungen von Garantien auf das Exportvolumen sind für Österreich
durch Schätzung eines positiven Exportmultiplikators und in einer Simulation des WIFO-Makromodells nachweisbar.
Keywords:Exportgarantien in Österreich; Export Guarantees in Austria
Forschungsbereich:Industrie-, Innovations- und internationale Ökonomie
Sprache:Deutsch
Export Guarantees in Austria
Austria translated the "acquis communautaire" with respect to export guarantee schemes into action when joining the European
Union in 1995. Public guarantees for outstanding debt from exports have since then been restricted to "non-marketable" risks.
Therefore, the Oesterreichische Kontrollbank provides guarantees only for exports to non-OECD member countries (and for exports
to the new OECD members, i.e., Mexico, South Korea, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland). Deliveries to "core-OECD" countries
can only be guaranteed if the terms of guarantee are longer than two years or if the counterparty is a non-private institution.
The reorientation resulted in a decline in new allocations of guarantees from ATS 54.5 billion (1994) to 47.2 billion (1997).
The share of guaranteed exports in total exports declined to 8.1 percent. Nevertheless, the export performance of Austrian
firms was not negatively affected. A WIFO survey among active customers of the OeKB revealed that public guarantees have been
almost completely replaced by private insurance. The effects of public export guarantees can only be assessed by analysing
"non-marketable" risks. Currently, these comprise mainly outstanding debt of developing and Central and Eastern European countries.
In 1994 about 94 percent of outstanding guarantees (ATS 86.3 billion) referred to exports of goods and only 5.7 percent to
exports of services. Roughly 30 percent of the guarantees were used to insure exports of Austrian machinery and cars, 23 percent
for manufactured goods, 14.5 percent for chemical products, and 8.1 percent for consumer products. For allocated public guarantees
we can estimate an export multiplier of 1, i.e., ATS 1 billion of export guarantees generate ATS 1 billion of additional exports.
The effectiveness of the Austrian export guarantee system is thus remarkably better than that of the German Hermes guarantees.
The economic relevance of the guarantee system was assessed in a model simulation. Under the assumption of no private insurance
system being established for "non-marketable" risks, exports of goods would decline by 5.6 percent and be more strongly concentrated
on the European Union market. Subsequently, 39,000 jobs would be lost and investment would go down by 2.9 percent, which would
finally result in a decline of gross domestic product by 1.1 to 1.8 percent during the simulation period until 2001.