ⓒYONHAP News

The government has drawn up a budget plan worth 639 trillion won for next year, a five-point-two percent increase from this year.

The budget was finalized during a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, resulting in a spending plan with the lowest on-year increase since 2017, when the government had raised the budget by three-point-seven percent.

To secure funds for next year’s budget, the government will restructure expenditures to the tune of 24 trillion won, the largest amount to date.

As part of such restructuring efforts, the government will scrap temporary measures it had laid out to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic and freeze the wages of civil servants who rank grade four or above. Officials at the minister or vice minister level will be obligated to return ten percent of their salaries.

With the 639 trillion won budget plan, the nation’s deficit of the consolidated fiscal balance, excluding social security funds, is expected to reach 58-point-two trillion won. 

That sum is a 48-percent decrease from this year’s projected figure of nearly 111 trillion won, which includes the second supplementary budget, and the smallest amount to be posted since 2019.

The government also expects the budget proposal will reduce the fiscal deficit to two-point-six percent of the nation’s gross domestic product(GDP) from this year’s five-point-one percent.

While the national debt is forecast to account for 49-point-eight percent of the nation’s GDP at nearly one-quadrillion-135 trillion won next year, the government was quick to stress that the projected 66 trillion won increase in the national debt next year is the smallest margin in four years.

Stressing the importance of financial stability in the face of various economic crises, finance minister Choo Kyung-ho said the government decided to focus on fiscal soundness in compiling next year’s budget.