여야, 내년도 예산안 최종 합의 R&D 6천억•새만금 3천억↑
South Korea's National Assembly has passed the budget bill for 2024 --that's been long overdue --due to partisan disputes, particularly over cuts in research and development.
Our Moon Hye-ryeon has the details.
After months of debate, the country’s spending plans for the coming year are set.
The National Assembly passed the budget bill in a plenary session on Thursday.
While the statutory processing deadline was almost three weeks ago, the two rival parties had failed to reach an agreement until now.
There’s been several changes made to the proposal submitted by the Finance Ministry in August --from the total budget to how much has been allocated to each sector.
The total budget is some 656-point-6 trillion Korean won or roughly 500 billion U.S. dollars.
But that's around 180 million dollars lower than the proposed amount.
Fiscal soundness is becoming increasingly important due to the country's rising debt to GDP ratio --the projected debt to GDP ratio for 2024 is 51 percent.
As a result, the government proposed cutting the budget for the R&D, education and public administration sectors to reduce spending.
But the unprecedented slash in the research and development sector sparked debate as it’s the first time since 1991 that R&D has seen a decrease compared to the year before, with the proposed budget seeing a 16-point-6 percent drop from 2023.
The final budget saw increases in budgets for science and technology, industry, SMEs and energy, social welfare and transport but drops in public administration and local government budgets as well as a decrease in the national defense budget compared to the proposal.
The budget bill proposed earlier this year had a focus on strengthening social welfare --and this was reflected in the final spending plan for 2024.
There was a concentration on supporting young people in particular --an additional 53 million dollars designated for extending housing support for young people, and nearly 17 million dollars for an initiative to give young people discounts for using public transport.
It's not just young people, however, who will be benefiting from the changes in the budget proposal.
An extra 4-point-3 million dollars has been added to support farmers and fishermen with their electricity bills, and the pension system for the handicapped will see the biggest rise since 2013 with an additional 21 million dollars.
Meanwhile, the development project in the reclaimed wetland area of Saemangeum was another major point of contention --and the two parties agreed to increase its budget by 230 million dollars.
Moon Hye-ryeon, Arirang News.
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2023-12-21, 18:00 (KST)
