Argentine bond and stock prices fell sharply yesterday after the country's economy minister indicated that he wanted to voluntarily restructure Argentina's billions of dollars in public-sector debt, including that owned by foreigners.

Argentina has about $132 billion in public-sector debt, of which about $70 billion is in global bonds.

Moreover, the government, strapped for cash, levies taxes of up to 45 percent on exports to help pay the country's huge public-sector debt, currently equivalent to about 127 percent of gross domestic product.

After years of printing bonds to maintain public spending, Japan's public-sector debt, at 140 percent of gross domestic product, is now the highest in the industrial world.

Last fall, the Government worked out an arrangement with commercial bankers to reschedule nearly $44 billion of public-sector debt over 20 years.

Total public-sector debt as % of GDP 53.1% (1987)

Republic National Bank of New York wrote down a significant part of its Mexican public-sector debt, thus becoming the first American bank to take such an action.

He said the debt, officially calculated at about $5 billion, would be renegotiated together with the country's $27 billion public-sector debt.

The deal covers $20.5 billion of the nation's $26 billion of public-sector debt.

"Canada's debt statistics may shock even an American, with the ratio of public-sector debt to G.D.P., for instance, standing in excess of 100 percent," he wrote this month.