Nationwide 'Gender Sensitivity Projects' Show Low Achievement Rates Compared to Budget Execution Rates

Average Budget Execution Rate at 94.9% · Achievement Rate Drops to 62.8%

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Yoon Jamin] It has been revealed that the achievement rate compared to the budget execution rate of gender-responsive projects in 17 metropolitan local governments nationwide is low.

On the 29th, according to the analysis of the gender-responsive budget settlement status of 17 city and provincial local governments nationwide by Representative Lee Hyung-seok (Democratic Party of Korea, Gwangju Buk-gu Eul), the average budget execution rate for gender-responsive projects was high at 94.9%, whereas the achievement rate was only 62.8%.

Jeonbuk had the highest achievement rate at 81.36%, followed by Gwangju at 74.19%, Chungnam at 70.34%, and Incheon at 69.75%.

The gender-responsive budgeting system was introduced during the Participatory Government to enhance the effect of promoting gender equality in finance by analyzing the impact of budgets on women and men.

Its basis was established in the National Finance Act enacted in 2006, and the government has been preparing and executing gender-responsive budgets since 2010. Local governments have also been implementing the gender-responsive budgeting system since 2013 following the revision of the Local Finance Act in 2011.

Each local government annually prepares a gender-responsive budget report that includes an overview, scale, gender equality effects, performance goals, and gender-benefit analysis, and selects target projects.

They also set performance indicators to verify whether goals are achieved and evaluate both the project execution rate and goal achievement rate during settlement.

As a result of analyzing the gender-responsive settlement reports of 17 metropolitan city and provincial local governments, Representative Lee found that although the total budget amount and project scale differ among local governments, most showed an execution rate exceeding 90%, with an average execution rate reaching 94.9%.

On the other hand, the goal achievement rate, which indicates whether the indicators set by the local governments to evaluate the contribution of projects to gender equality were met, ranged from as low as 29.7% to a maximum of 81.4%, averaging 62.8%, showing poor performance compared to the budget execution rate.

Representative Lee said, “There are growing doubts about the appropriateness and effectiveness of gender-responsive projects recently promoted by the government, and it is even more concerning that local governments are failing to properly achieve even the goals they set themselves. Therefore, it is necessary to improve the entire process from goal setting, project selection, performance indicator preparation, to evaluation of gender-responsive projects.”

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