101 trillion won proposed for next year's budget

The proposed national budget for the coming year is 101 trillion won, which is 6.3%, or 6 trillion won, higher than this year's budget, taking this year¡¯s revised supplementary budget bill into account.

Accordingly, each citizen of South Korea will be responsible for 2.51 million won (including local tax) next year. It is 20.6% higher than the 2.08 million won paid this year per person, and it translates into an increase of 1.72 million won for a family of four.

Of the total gross domestic product that is subject to taxation, the individual taxpayers¡¯ burden will increase from 18.7% to 29.7%.

President Kim Dae-Jung agreed to the proposed budget for 2001 at a Cabinet meeting Tuesday, and he will submit the proposal to the National Assembly on or prior to the deadline of Oct. 2.

The Kim administration¡¯s proposed budget reflects a modest projection of 6.3% economic growth (compared to 9% for this year's budget), which is 2% less than the current growth rate of 8-9%.

The expected expenditures in the general accounting are estimated to total 94.9 trillion won, an increase of 6.8% from this year. Revenue from non-tax related sources, such as the principal collection of loans made by the government or individual retirement deposits made to the Finance Loan Special Treasury, is expected to decrease 1.4% to 6.1 trillion won.

Next year's tax general accounting tax revenue is expected to grow by 17 trillion won to 86 trillion won through a more stringent investigation of non-reported income, which has been suspected of having risen following the economic recovery from the foreign currency crisis.

Other non-tax revenues such as rollover of any budget surplus or liquidation of government-held stocks are expected to decrease by 3 trillion won to 5.9 trillion won.