Government Reflects 'Yoon's Pledges' in Next Year's Budget Guidelines... Includes 'Basic Pension and Soldier Salary Increases'

Additional Guidelines for Preparing the 2023 Budget Proposal and Fund Operation Plan

[Asia Economy Sejong=Reporter Son Seonhee] The government has decided to reflect President Yoon Seok-yeol's key pledges such as 'basic pension increase, establishment of Youth Leap Account, and soldier salary increase' in next year's budget proposal.

On the 13th, the Ministry of Economy and Finance announced that it has notified each ministry of the "Additional Guidelines for the Preparation of the 2023 Budget Proposal and Fund Operation Plan" containing these details.

This includes ▲basic pension increase ▲establishment of Youth Leap Account ▲soldier salary increase ▲parental allowance payment, which are representative pledges of President Yoon. Since the new government's national tasks were specified in the guidelines distributed at the end of March, the contents have been supplemented. Each ministry plans to reflect the new government's policy tasks as much as possible in next year's budget proposal and fund operation plan according to these additional guidelines.

As most of these tasks are premised on fiscal expenditure, the Ministry of Economy and Finance intends to promote intensive fiscal innovation from the budget request stage to secure fiscal capacity necessary for implementing national tasks. The ministry stated, "All discretionary expenditure projects will be reexamined from zero-base, and a mandatory restructuring of at least 10% will be required," adding, "For mandatory expenditures as well, measures to improve spending efficiency such as expanding the use of social security systems and preventing fraudulent claims will be ensured."

In addition, to expand the fiscal revenue base and manage fund soundness, the ministry said, "For projects where the public sector participates as a service provider to build private markets, we will promote transfer to the private sector to discover new revenue sources," and added, "To manage the soundness of funds highly dependent on external resources, we will additionally discover self-generated income and strengthen efforts to restructure expenditure."

After consultations with related ministries, the Ministry of Economy and Finance plans to submit next year's budget proposal to the National Assembly by September 2.

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