[Asia Economy Reporter Oh Ju-yeon] The Democratic Party of Korea has set the passage of the supplementary budget (supplementary budget) bill, which expands support for small business owners and self-employed workers, in the plenary session for February 10-11 next month, and has requested proactive cooperation from the People Power Party. The scope of additional quarantine support payments through the supplementary budget will also be expanded.
On the 18th, Park Wan-joo, chairman of the Democratic Party's Policy Committee, said at the morning floor strategy meeting, "This supplementary budget should embrace the 2.2 million self-employed people who have felt relative deprivation in the government's support blind spots," and emphasized, "Among the 5.5 million self-employed, special employment workers, freelancers, cultural artists, corporate taxi drivers, and others who are not included in the 3.29 million legally recognized small business owners and have been outside government support, their difficulties must be properly addressed this time."
Chairman Park said, "The government's plan to provide an additional 3 million KRW each to 3.2 million small business owners with a supplementary budget of 14 trillion KRW is the largest ever support for small business owners and self-employed workers, utilizing excess tax revenue," adding, "In the budget formulation process, we will carefully address not only the difficulties caused by COVID-19 but also the pain of those who have felt relative deprivation in blind spots." He then urged the opposition party for "proactive cooperation."
At a subsequent press briefing, Chairman Park said, "Since excess tax revenue can only be utilized after the settlement procedure in April, issuing government bonds is inevitable." He added, "The party expressed gratitude for the difficult decision to prepare a supplementary budget for small business owners and the self-employed in January." He explained, "Some media outlets have mentioned figures like 20 trillion KRW or payments of 10 million KRW each, but these are meaningless. We discussed whether it is possible to reduce the amount below 14 trillion KRW, but no specific amount was conveyed." He added, "We discussed whether both the support unit price and the target can be expanded."
Regarding People Power Party floor leader Kim Ki-hyun's proposal to increase the small business COVID-19 recovery support amount up to 10 million KRW and expand the loss compensation rate to 100%, Park said, "Currently, the loss compensation rate is 80%, and increasing it to 100% is estimated to cost about 400 billion KRW in the budget. However, the Ministry of Economy and Finance has shown a very difficult stance to accept this on principle, so this is an issue for ruling and opposition parties to discuss."
He also said, "It is unclear whether the proposal to support up to 10 million KRW means raising the cap to 10 million KRW for the 3.2 million small business owners who are currently receiving 3 million KRW or giving 10 million KRW to all of them. If it simply means giving 10 million KRW uniformly to 3.2 million people, that would amount to 32 trillion KRW, so we need to clarify the intent."
The Democratic Party expects the government to submit the supplementary budget bill to the National Assembly on the 24th. Accordingly, they plan to submit a request to convene a temporary National Assembly within this week and open the February session from the 25th to expedite the supplementary budget process.
On the same day, floor spokesperson Jo Oh-seop told reporters, "We are aiming to pass the bill in the plenary session on February 10 or 11," adding, "Since election campaigning will officially begin on February 15, if it is not processed before then, it could be delayed until after the transition team period, possibly until May."
He continued, "A supplementary budget is necessary at the right time and place, but there can be cases where the budget is not executed when it is urgently needed," and said, "The party's position is that it must be processed within the February temporary National Assembly so that benefits can reach the 5.5 million self-employed people who are struggling greatly."
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