Ruling and Opposition Parties Stalled in Reviewing 4th Disaster Relief Fund Supplementary Budget

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Chun-han] The National Assembly's Special Committee on Budget and Accounts held an adjustment subcommittee meeting on the 23rd to continue reviewing the supplementary budget (supplementary budget) of 15 trillion won for the payment of the 4th disaster relief fund, but progress has been slow.

On that day, the ruling and opposition parties continued the second day of budget reduction reviews for each ministry's projects in the subcommittee, but failed to find common ground on major projects and repeatedly postponed the review.

The Democratic Party of Korea insisted on maintaining the original budget for most projects, but the People Power Party demanded full or significant cuts, focusing on job creation budgets. In particular, most of the budget reviews under the Ministry of Employment and Labor, which includes large-scale job-related projects such as Youth Job Creation Support (561.1 billion won) and Emergency Employment Stability Subsidy (456.3 billion won), were classified as postponed.

Deputy Minister Ahn Il-hwan of the Ministry of Economy and Finance explained the necessity, saying, "(This year's main budget) was prepared based on the expectation of about 100 daily confirmed cases last year, but due to the increase in confirmed cases at the end of the year and the beginning of the year, a supplementary budget was prepared." Assemblyman Chu Kyung-ho, the People Power Party's secretary of the Budget and Accounts Committee, criticized, "At that time, they kept saying the COVID-19 situation was severe, but now they say they are making a supplementary budget," and added, "The government deceived the National Assembly."

Some health and quarantine budgets, including 2.3484 trillion won for securing an additional 79 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, were approved as originally proposed on the day.

Earlier, the ruling and opposition parties agreed to make every effort to process the supplementary budget bill at the plenary session on the 24th. The People Power Party stated that they would thoroughly review the supplementary budget details until the very end without being bound by deadlines, but the Democratic Party hinted at the possibility of unilaterally passing the supplementary budget bill if the opposition continues to delay the review.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.