Vice Minister Ki Jae: "Preparing Measures to Improve Spending Efficiency of Employment Insurance Fund and Policy Funds"

The First Meeting of the Fiscal Management Strategy Council... Temporary Financial and Employment Support Normalization Under Review

[Sejong=Asia Economy Reporter Kim Hyunjung] Ando-geol, Vice Minister of Strategy and Finance, announced plans to establish expenditure efficiency measures for key tasks such as the Employment Insurance Fund, policy funds, and big data platforms.

On the 1st, Vice Minister Ando held the 1st Fiscal Management Strategy Council at the government Seoul office and revealed the 2021 expenditure efficiency promotion direction with this content.

The government plans to improve the expenditure structure this year by considering changes in population, economy, and industrial structure such as the decline in school-age population, and will also gradually review the normalization of temporary financial and employment support to overcome the COVID-19 crisis.

Conventional subsidy and grant projects that have passed the three-year support period will be re-examined from the ground up regarding the necessity and appropriateness of the support scale, and projects with poor execution, low performance, or similar overlaps will be reorganized. Fiscal project evaluations scattered across ministries will be systematized through standardization of evaluation indicators.

The Fiscal Management Strategy Council, which held its first meeting on this day, will operate as a platform where major government ministries and private experts gather opinions to establish and implement fiscal investment strategies and institutional innovation measures. The separately operated Social Insurance Policy Council, Expenditure Structure Reform Group, and Long-term Fiscal Outlook Committee will also be integrated into the council to broadly address fiscal issues.

The council announced that it will focus on enhancing economic vitality, future innovation investments such as the Korean New Deal, building a foundation for people’s livelihood and inclusion, and improving citizens’ safety and quality of life, and will reorganize investment priorities. Through the establishment of a Climate Change Fund to realize '2050 Carbon Neutrality,' preparation of support systems for social disasters such as infectious diseases, and institutionalization of support for small business damages, it plans to change the framework of fiscal support systems and innovate budget formulation and execution methods.

Along with this, institutional management measures to secure mid- to long-term fiscal soundness and strong expenditure restructuring plans such as a 10% structural adjustment of discretionary spending will also be prepared.