National Assembly Approved 182 Trillion Won in National Budget

The National Assembly held the meeting of the Special Committee for Budget and Accounts and the plenary meeting yesterday and passed the budget for the next fiscal year worth 182.856 trillion won. The total amount has been reduced by 244 billion won from 183.1 trillion won in the initial budget draft submitted by the government. The National Assembly also approved 111.5251 trillion won in the general accounts, a 174.9 billion won decrease from the initial draft.

The National Assembly reduced 1.23 trillion won from the initial government draft in the deliberation process, but increase 986 billion won, which had not been included in the initial draft.

The National Assembly added 453.2 billion won in the investment in SOC(Social Overhead Capital), 218.9 billion won in agricultural and fisheries assistance, 147 billion won in educational and welfare projects, 72 billion won for small- and medium-sized enterprises, 53 billion won in defense budget and 44.6 billion won for other purposes.

Meanwhile, the National Assembly cut 334 billion won in promoting private investment in SOCs, 220 billion won in reserve fund, 74.3 billion won in the government share for annuity for civil servants, 48.5 billion won in grant for local governments and 22.9 billion won in interests on national bond.

Experts said that most of the budget cut by the National Assembly was reserve fund and others, which the government had inflated expecting them to be cut. The budget for the next year approved by the National Assembly was largely affected by personal interests of lawmakers, who tried to extract as much money as possible fro their constituencies ahead of the presidential election.

The National Assembly rammed through 99 pending bills including the revision of the water quality preservation act.

As lawmakers left the venue during the plenary meeting, failing to achieve the quorum, the meeting was adjourned for 25 minutes from 4:50 pm.

Young-Hae Choi Seung-Ryun Kim yhchoi65@donga.com srkim@donga.com