Year 2003 Budget Requests Reach 14 Trillion Won

Government agencies are reportedly seeking more than 140 trillion won for year 2003 budget. Since the government pledged earlier to downsize its spending for sound budgetary management, however, the coming allocation process will most likely lead to intense inter-ministerial debates for larger slices, the Ministry of Planning and Budget said on June 7.

According to the authority, 54 agencies across the central government asked for 132.6 trillion won combined for their operations for year 2003, up 25.2% from 105.9 trillion won a year earlier.

And the figure further amounts to 140.5 trillion won when based on a broader general standard that adds specially allocated budget to general accounting. It is a 25.5%, or 28.5 trillion won, increase in year-on-year comparison.

"We have set the upper limit for next year`s budget at 120 trillion won in line with the economic growth projection of 7 to 9%," said Jung Hae-bang, manager at MOPB who is responsible for budget assessment. "This means we will have to slash 20 trillion won for the amount sought by agencies."

Lim Sang-kyu, head of budget planning office, put on a more cautionary tone, "We plan to stop issuing loss-making national bonds next year, and there will be no more revenues from sales of government-owned corporations. Then we will see the income side reduce by 7.3 trillion won next year."

Some reasons cited for budget allocations are, in particular, drawing keen attention - 2 million won set to be paid every month to some 4,000 contracted teachers working with national universities; a 300 billion won-scale scholarship project for graduate students studying science and engineering; a more than twofold increase in living subsidies offered to North Korean defectors; and 12.1 billion won set to be provided to local governments for cemetery improvement projects.

The Civil Service Commission asked for the highest increase in budget at 399%, followed by the Ministry of Gender Equality and the Food and Drug Safety Agency, which sought 154% and 133% increases respectively.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defense came down to 18.44 trillion won budget, up 12.7% year-on-year. The number includes, MOPB said, 6.29 trillion won spending on military reinforcement and 12.15 trillion won in operating expenditure, which are up 14.9% and 11.6% respectively from this year.

Of the 18 trillion won total, 1.26 trillion won was allocated to the Air Force which will spend 491.8 billion won introducing F15K for the controversial next-generation fighter jet (FX) project. The Navy was hoping to spend 1.03 trillion won on 26 major projects including the lineup of 7000 tonnage-scale destroyers (KDX III).

308.4 billion won was asked for 24 new national security projects such as introducing a charter for presidential trips, establishing command headquarters in charge of chemical, biological and radiological warfare and deploying portable anti-aircraft ballistic missiles.

In addition, the ministry also wanted to raise food costs for service men and women to 4,849 won a day from the current 4,380 won, while seeking to provide subsidies to help military personnel send their children to college.

"We are hoping to be more committed to military reinforcement with 34.1% of the total defense spending, a slight increase from this year`s 33.5%, while maintaining the proportion of the budget at 3% of growth domestic product (GDP), slightly up from 2.8% this year," said a source from MOD.

Rae-Jeong Park Sang-Ho Yun ecopark@donga.com ysh1005@donga.com