[Deadline-Passing Settlement③] To Conduct Proper Settlement Review... "Advance Timing and Improve System"

Chairman Kim Jin-pyo Orders Secretariat to "Advance Settlement to June"
Efforts Needed to Reflect Settlement Review in Budget
Data Provision Methods Must Change to Increase Public Participation

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Naju-seok] This year's settlement review is likely to be a mere formality as it has again exceeded the legal deadline (before the opening of the regular National Assembly session). To ensure an effective settlement review, there are calls to advance the timing of the review so that sufficient examination can be conducted and reflected in the budget through institutional improvements.

On the 25th, Speaker of the National Assembly Kim Jin-pyo, during a report on the National Assembly Secretariat's work, ordered the preparation of improvement measures, saying, "Let's move the settlement, which is currently done in the last week of August, forward to June." Since his inauguration, Speaker Kim, who has emphasized strengthening the National Assembly's authority over budget and settlement reviews, has expressed his determination to reform the entire budget and settlement review process.

The related law has already been submitted to the National Assembly and is scheduled to be discussed by the Special Committee on Political Reform. On June 16, Member of the Democratic Party Maeng Seong-gyu, who has been discussing settlement review improvements with Speaker Kim, proposed a bill to advance the settlement review so that standing committees can review it in June and the Special Committee on Budget and Accounts can review it in July. This aims to fix the problem where settlement reviews are always delayed beyond the legal deadline and overshadowed by national audits and budget reviews, allowing proper examination and reflecting the results in budget formulation and deliberation.

Measures to increase public participation and interest in settlement reviews must also be prepared. Politicians believe that the more settlement reviews are reflected in the budget, the greater the public interest in settlements will be. Furthermore, there are calls to enhance accessibility so that the private sector can participate in the current settlement review process. Lee Sang-min, Senior Research Fellow at the Nara Salrim Research Institute, said, "Currently, the settlement bill is submitted to the National Assembly in a form that makes data analysis practically impossible, but accessible data should also be provided." He added, "If access to data such as Excel analysis becomes possible, the private sector and media can pay more special attention to the settlement."

In cases of multi-year and large-scale projects, frequent cost increases and schedule extensions occur, making in-depth settlement reviews difficult. To address this, the National Assembly has considered creating a specialized technical division within the Budget and Accounts Committee or expanding the Board of Audit and Inspection's audit requests.

More fundamentally, there are calls to move away from the current project-unit budget review method. Kim Kwang-mook, Visiting Professor at Seoul National University Graduate School of Public Administration and former Senior Specialist at the National Assembly Budget and Accounts Committee, said, "Currently, settlement reviews focus on detailed projects, but these projects have strong defensive logic and high expertise, making them difficult to revise, forcing focus on execution issues." He added, "The discussion should shift to the overall budget formulation direction." For example, it is now time to discuss the proportion of defense spending in the total budget, the share of higher education in education-related budgets, and the ratio of elite sports budgets to general public sports budgets.

Jo Il-chul, Ph.D. in Business Administration specializing in government accounting and Executive Director of the Paju Budget Policy Alliance who has worked as a staff member in the National Assembly, said, "Unlike private companies that prioritize settlements over budgets and conduct thorough performance evaluations to reflect them in effective budget planning, the government treats finances as ownerless blind money, making settlements a post-facto formality." He argued, "The National Assembly's Special Committee on Budget and Accounts should be made permanent so that meticulous reviews of settlements, along with budgets, are conducted."

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