Pocheon City Secures Record 142 Billion KRW in National and Provincial Funds Through Public Project Success

On December 2, Pocheon City in Gyeonggi Province announced that it had secured a total of 142 billion KRW in national and provincial funds by being selected for various public projects organized by central government ministries and Gyeonggi Province for the year 2025.

Promotional material for securing 142 billion KRW in national and provincial funds. Provided by Pocheon City.

This amount is more than double the 67 billion KRW secured in the previous year, representing a highly unusual achievement for a basic local government to accomplish in such a short period. If projects currently under review are included, the total secured funds will increase to 143 billion KRW.

The main projects selected this year include: 33 billion KRW for the solid manure fuel facility; 31.9 billion KRW for the comprehensive disaster risk improvement project in the Shineup district; 20.7 billion KRW for the special situation area development and border region development support project; 17.8 billion KRW for the old water supply pipe network improvement project; 8.4 billion KRW for the Naechon district rural space improvement project; and 4.75 billion KRW for the school complex facility project. A notable feature is that many of the selected projects are directly related to citizens' daily lives, such as climate crisis response, energy transition, improvement of agricultural and livestock environments, and expansion of living infrastructure.

The city cited changes in its administrative organization, based on the "communication and trust" governance philosophy of the 8th popularly elected administration, as the driving force behind securing large-scale funding. The expansion of departmental discretionary authority and the establishment of a performance-oriented, accountable administrative system enabled public officials to shift from passive administration to a proactive organization capable of directly planning, proposing, and negotiating projects. As a result, the competitiveness of public project applications was significantly strengthened.

In practice, working-level staff communicated closely with their supervisors from the project design stage, developing differentiated review strategies and earning high evaluations.

Additionally, the city is holding key subsidy project review meetings to ensure that the secured national and provincial funds lead to tangible results for citizens. Efforts are also being made to analyze the causes of underperforming projects and to improve execution management in order to increase the execution rate within the year.

Baek Younghyeon, Mayor of Pocheon, stated, "Securing national and provincial funds through public projects supplements our limited independent resources and provides a foundation for proactively shaping Pocheon's future. We will establish trustworthy local governance that brings about changes citizens can truly feel."

He added, "Next year, we will develop a 'preemptive national and provincial funding strategy' by analyzing the central government's mid- to long-term plans and fiscal trends, and we will discover new Pocheon-style projects in climate and energy, future education, tourism, and the sixth industry sectors to create a city where citizens can be happy."

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