Budget Tentatively Set at 120 Trillion Won

The Assembly’s Special Committee on Budget and Account tentatively reached an agreement for setting next year’s budget at 120 trillion won after holding an executive secretary meeting on December 28. The budget has increased by 2.5 trillion won compared to the original proposal of 117.5 trillion by the government.

The committee will hold a general meeting on December 29 to deal with the budget content by voting on the draft, and is expected to deliver the bill at the next plenary session.

Lee Han-gu, Executive Secretary of the Budgetary Committee and member of the Grand National Party said, “There has been a net increase on the budget in the process of adjustment. This occurred due to a late consideration of the 800 billion won-subsidies for the agriculture and fishing sectors, considering the effects of signing the free trade agreement (FTA) with Chile and the 200 billion won-budget related to sending troops to Iraq.”

Lee added, “Another factor that increased the budget is that the government included the repayment of public funds to the general accounts that were not originally assigned for repayment in the beginning.”

Other items that led to the budget increase include the investment of social overhead capital (300 billion won), investment in farming and fishing villages (280 billion won), subsidies for small and semi-large enterprises (200 billion won) and subsidies for local governments for typhoons (100 billion won).

In coping with the increased budget, the committee announced that, “We decided to delete unnecessary and less urgent budgets by 1.48 trillion won proposed by the government, and will utilize the money in the increased budget.”

Hyung-gwon Pu Myoung-Gun Lee bookum90@donga.com gun43@donga.com