Gwangju City Councilor Park Sugi Criticizes City's Poor Response to National Budget Cuts for Sangsaeng Card

Park Sugi, a member of the Gwangju Metropolitan Council, criticized Gwangju City's response as inadequate regarding the complete cut of the national budget for the Gwangju Sangsaeng Card local currency project for the next year.

According to the administrative audit materials submitted to Councilor Park by Gwangju City on the 6th, the government has announced a complete cut of the national budget support for local currencies in 2024, revealing that the Gwangju Sangsaeng Card project is facing difficulties in budget allocation again this year, with 61.8 billion KRW allocated solely from city funds following last year.

Compared to the previous year when 16.6 billion KRW of national funds were reflected in the Sangsaeng Card project, the government currently classifies the local currency project as a ‘self-established budget based on local government needs’ and maintains a firm stance of ‘no budget support.’

Gwangju City is hopeful that the budget will be reflected in the National Assembly and states that it is making efforts through consultations with members of the National Assembly to have the budget included, but it has been pointed out that no other measures have been established.

Councilor Park said, “While revenues have decreased by more than 440 billion KRW, 64.8 billion KRW is being allocated solely from city funds for the Sangsaeng Card project,” and added, “Despite being a project with a massive self-funded budget, performance evaluations such as ‘the effect of the Sangsaeng Card on the local economy’ have not been properly analyzed or submitted.”

He continued, “Since October, the restriction limiting Sangsaeng Card usage to businesses with annual sales under 3 billion KRW has been in place, but there is a lack of evaluation on how this measure has impacted the project, to what extent the goals of ‘preventing local capital outflow’ and ‘supporting small business owners’ have been achieved,” and added, “This is a project that has faced continuous debates on budget effectiveness with the central government, with over 80 billion KRW invested annually for more than five years. Gwangju City must take greater responsibility by analyzing the project’s effectiveness on the ground and presenting evaluated data to justify the allocation of national budget support.”

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