‘Despite Government Austerity’ Sejong and Chungnam Next Year Budget Increased by Over 8%

The budget size for Sejong City and Chungnam Province next year is expected to increase by about 8 percentage points compared to this year. The budget increase holds its own significance as an achievement despite the government recently maintaining a fiscal austerity stance.

◆Reflecting the National Assembly Sejong Office Building, securing a budget of 1.5 trillion won=According to Sejong City on the 29th, the government budget proposal for next year includes 1.5109 trillion won for Sejong City. This is an increase of 123.5 billion won (8.9%) compared to last year and includes budgets for major local projects such as the purchase of land for the National Assembly Sejong Office Building (35 billion won) and the President’s second office project (1 billion won).

Through this, Sejong City secured a total budget of 84.7 billion won for the National Assembly Sejong Office Building (including 14.7 billion won already secured for design costs) and a total of 1.3 billion won for the President’s second office (including 300 million won budgeted this year).

The next year’s budget proposal for Sejong City also includes many key projects such as the establishment of a future strategic capital base and citizen safety sectors.

First, large-scale social overhead capital (SOC) ongoing project budgets such as 165.5 billion won for the ‘Sejong?Cheongju Expressway Construction’ and 90.9 billion won for the ‘Sejong?Anseong Expressway Construction’ were included in the next year’s government budget proposal.

Budgets were also reflected for the construction of a driver’s license test center (100 million won), additional construction of bridges crossing the Geum River (100 million won), and natural disaster risk improvement district maintenance projects such as Wolha Stream and Samsung Stream, making it possible to proceed with these projects next year.

Additionally, installation and operation costs for the women’s emergency call 1366 were newly included, which Sejong City expects will partially alleviate the inconvenience of citizens who had to use facilities in other regions due to the absence of such a facility.

◆On the verge of the 10 trillion won national budget era=Chungnam Province secured 9.8243 trillion won in national funds in next year’s government budget proposal, including new project budgets such as Seosan Airport, defense robots, and artificial islands. This is 1.169 trillion won (13.5%) more than this year’s 8.6553 trillion won and 765.4 billion won (8.4%) more than the 9.0589 trillion won confirmed by the National Assembly.

Chungnam Province focused on securing budgets for future strategic industry development and projects related to establishing the Chungcheong regional wide-area living economic zone in next year’s budget.

Major new projects include ▲construction of a defense robot system test facility ▲biomass vegan leather development and cluster ▲carbon-neutral biogas green convergence cluster ▲Seosan Airport construction.

Among these, the defense robot system test facility is planned to be built in Nonsan, where the headquarters of the three armed forces are adjacent and military-related institutions such as the Defense University are concentrated. The design cost of 500 million won was first reflected in next year’s budget.

Seosan Airport faced difficulties in project promotion after failing the preliminary feasibility study in May. However, through continuous consultations with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the inclusion of 1 billion won for design costs in next year’s budget is evaluated as having opened the way for project promotion.

Major ongoing projects include 101.7 billion won allocated for the Janghang Line improvement project, which is expected to expand transportation infrastructure.

Chungnam Province also included support for the 2027 Summer World University Games (15.4 billion won) and the Western Inland Tourism Promotion Project (2 billion won) in next year’s budget proposal.

Meanwhile, Daejeon City is expected to secure national funds in the 4 trillion won range again next year. The budget for Daejeon City reflected in next year’s government budget proposal is 2.1839 trillion won out of the requested 2.518 trillion won. Including local allocation tax and others, Daejeon City explains that securing national funds in the 4 trillion won range for two consecutive years is possible.

Major budgets included in next year’s government budget proposal are 1 billion won for the design of the Space Technology Innovation Talent Training Center, 23 billion won for the construction of the Urban Railway Line 2 tram, 37.4 billion won for the first phase construction of the Chungcheong regional wide-area railway, and 300 million won for the renovation of facilities for the 2027 Summer World University Games.

Additionally, many SOC-related budgets were reflected, including 8.6 billion won for the Daejeon?Okcheon wide-area railway construction project, 7.7 billion won for the relocation of the Daejeon vehicle technology team inbound line, and 6 billion won for the opening of the east entrance road to Daedeok Special Zone.

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