Gangwon Province Draws Up 296.5 Billion Won Emergency Supplementary Budget, Focused on High Oil Price Relief

Gangwon Province Allocates 8.6696 Trillion Won in First Supplementary Budget
Focus on Restoring the Local Economy

The Gangwon Provincial Government announced that it has drawn up the first supplementary budget for 2026, totaling 866.96 billion won, and will submit it to the provincial council on April 23. This represents an increase of 296.5 billion won (3.5%) compared to the original budget of 837.31 billion won.

View of Gangwon Provincial Government Building. Provided by Gangwon Provincial Government.

This supplementary budget is a one-off measure aimed at alleviating the economic burden on residents caused by high oil prices and inflation, by providing "high oil price damage compensation" and reflecting the use of national funds that were urgently utilized before formal approval.

Initially, the province proposed to the central government that the compensation funds for high oil prices be executed promptly using the contingency fund, without requiring a supplementary budget. However, according to the central government's policy, contingency funds can only be used for emergency disaster countermeasures and not for local government subsidies. As a result, the province urgently drew up the supplementary budget.

Of the high oil price damage compensation fund, 17 billion won from the net surplus of the 2025 fiscal year was used as provincial revenue, and the remaining 8.5 billion won was secured by reducing the contingency fund.

The main allocations include 228.1 billion won in national and provincial matching funds for the high oil price compensation, issuance of 42.6 billion won in local gift certificates, and a total of 7.69 billion won in national funds allocated to 56 government-subsidized projects.

The "high oil price damage compensation" fund totals 253.3 billion won, and will be provided in varying amounts between 150,000 won and 600,000 won depending on income levels and regional conditions.

First, using the pre-approved budget, the first round of payments will be made from April 27 to May 8 to basic livelihood recipients, the near-poor, and single-parent families. The second round will be open for application and payment to residents in the bottom 70% income bracket from May 18 to July 3.

In particular, to minimize any disruption to on-site administrative work at town, township, and neighborhood offices due to the overlap of compensation fund processing and local election duties, the province plans to allocate an additional 200 million won of provincial funds to support and expand supplementary personnel for distributing the compensation funds to local governments.

Additionally, the province announced that 232.1 billion won in national funds were included in the supplementary budget promoted by the central government to address the Middle East war crisis.

The province will closely examine the scale of matching funds and allocation plans for other national projects reflected in the central government's supplementary budget to ensure timely implementation of its high oil price response projects. It has also already begun preparations for a second supplementary budget, including identifying new provincial projects to address gaps in government support.

Yeo Junghyup, Acting Governor of Gangwon Province, stated, "This supplementary budget was urgently prepared to provide meaningful assistance to residents struggling with the high oil prices. We will do our utmost to execute the budget swiftly once it is finalized, to help resolve the difficulties faced by the local economy."

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