Public institutions to receive bonus despite having a record-high debt

Public institutions are seeing the largest increase in debt and a record-low net profit in seven years but 99 percent of them (127 out of 129) are receiving bonuses this year. This is due to the current eval‎uation system that awards points to public institutions based on how well they responded to the government’s national tasks rather than improvements made in their management performance or financial structure. It has been pointed out that the government is aggravating the health of the public sector by utilizing public institutions in carrying out national tasks rather than doing it with the national budget that is controlled by the National Assembly. This inevitably puts more burden on the public as a result.

The Ministry of Economy and Finance on Friday held a steering committee of public institutions at the government complex in Seoul and unveiled the management performance eval‎uation of public institutions for 2019. Among the 129 public institutions, 72 (55.8%) received A (Great) or B (Good) grade, similar to 71 (55.4%) from a year ago. The same number of them (17) got failing grades of D (Poor) or E (Very Poor) as 2018. Each employee at 127 public institutions will receive up to 10 million won in bonus as a result of this eval‎uation.

The total net profit of the entire public institutions last year stood at 600 billion won, the lowest since 2012. But the debt rose to a record high of 525.1 trillion won, up 21.4 trillion won from the previous year. Nevertheless, public institutions have received an overly generous eval‎uation as they did in 2018.


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