Gyeonggi-do Expands Emergency Welfare Budget to 109.2 Billion KRW

[Asia Economy (Suwon) = Reporter Lee Young-gyu] Gyeonggi Province will increase its emergency welfare project budget from 81.7 billion won to 109.2 billion won this year.

Gyeonggi Province announced on the 10th that it secured an additional 22 billion won in national funds through the 3rd supplementary budget at the National Assembly on the 3rd, and further secured 5.5 billion won in supplementary budgets from Gyeonggi Province and city/counties, expanding the related budget to 109.2 billion won while supporting living expenses for households in crisis due to COVID-19 and other reasons.

The emergency welfare project is a program where the government and local governments share financial responsibility to provide living expenses for a certain period to households temporarily in crisis due to reasons such as fire, disaster, or unemployment.

In April, the government included households in crisis due to the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19) in the existing emergency welfare project support targets, and relaxed the property and financial asset criteria among the income, property, and financial asset standards used as support eligibility criteria to expand the target group.

Additionally, to further expand the support targets in the second half of the year, the government plans to release additional relaxed support criteria within this month.

By the end of last month, the province had supported 66,964 households in crisis with approximately 45.65 billion won of government emergency welfare project funds.

Along with this, for crisis households exceeding the government's emergency welfare criteria, the province has additionally supported a 'Gyeonggi Province-type Emergency Welfare' project budget (around 10 billion won). By the end of last month, 10,635 households received about 7.47 billion won in support.

A provincial official explained, "If the supplementary budget is secured without any issues, the government emergency welfare project funds to support crisis households in the province this year will expand to 109.2 billion won, and the Gyeonggi Province-type emergency welfare project funds will expand to 17.4 billion won."