Gwangju Region's R&D Development Project Funding Ranks Last for 5 Consecutive Years

Urgent Need to Improve Local R&D Budget Support and Project Selection Incentives

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Yoon Jamin] It has been revealed that the R&D research and development project budget in the Gwangju area has ranked last for five consecutive years.

It was found that R&D research and development projects are excessively concentrated only in Daejeon and Chungcheong areas adjacent to the metropolitan area, raising urgent calls for improvement measures such as R&D budget support and incentives for national balanced development.

According to the national audit data submitted by National Assembly member Cho Oh-seop (Democratic Party of Korea, Gwangju Buk-gu Gap) from the Korea Agency for Infrastructure Technology Advancement on the 28th, the land, infrastructure, and transportation R&D project budget over the past five years amounted to a total of 2.3804 trillion won: 398.4 billion won in 2017, 440.1 billion won in 2018, 451.7 billion won in 2019, 501.2 billion won in 2020, and 589 billion won in 2021.

A total of 1.5007 trillion won (63%) was supported over five years only in the metropolitan area, including Seoul (544.5 billion won, 22.9%), Gyeonggi (858.4 billion won, 36.1%), and Incheon (97.8 billion won, 4.1%).

Daejeon (332.1 billion won, 14%), Chungbuk (58.4 billion won, 2.5%), and Chungnam (43.6 billion won, 1.8%) in the Daejeon-Chungcheong area received 434.1 billion won (18.3%).

On the other hand, the Honam region including Gwangju (20.9 billion won, 0.9%), Jeonnam (33.2 billion won, 1.4%), and Jeonbuk (25.3 billion won, 1.1%) received only 79.4 billion won (3.3%).

This is about 1/19 of the metropolitan area and only about 1/5 compared to the Daejeon-Chungcheong area.

In particular, Gwangju ranked 15th, the lowest level following Jeju and Ulsan, for five consecutive years with 2.8 billion won (0.7%) in 2017, 3.5 billion won (0.8%) in 2018, 4.6 billion won (1%) in 2019, 4.4 billion won (0.9%) in 2020, and 5.6 billion won (1%) in 2021.

Assemblyman Cho said, "The Honam region has not a single national large-scale research facility, and its R&D investment budget remains at the lowest level nationwide. It also experienced the painful failure of attracting the multipurpose synchrotron accelerator last year," adding, "It is necessary to prevent the vicious cycle of R&D projects relying only on metropolitan-centered infrastructure and to provide R&D budget support and project selection incentives in local areas to create an economy of scale competitive with the metropolitan area."