Busan City and Saechulbal Fund Sign Business Agreement to Strengthen Support for Small Business Owners

2 PM on the 17th at City Hall, Mayor Park Hyung-jun and Kwon Nam-joo, CEO of Saechulbal Fund and President of Korea Asset Management Corporation, Attend

First Agreement Signed Among Local Governments Nationwide... Established to Enhance Socioeconom

On the 17th at 2 PM, Busan City will sign the Small Business Owners and Self-Employed New Start Fund and the "Busan City Small Business Support Enhancement Memorandum of Understanding" at the City Hall International Protocol Room.

At the signing ceremony, Mayor Park Hyung-jun and Kwon Nam-joo, CEO of the New Start Fund and President of the Korea Asset Management Corporation, will attend and directly sign the agreement. In addition, key officials from both organizations will also be present.

The New Start Fund, exclusively operated by the Korea Asset Management Corporation, was launched in October 2022 as the nation’s first debt adjustment program dedicated to small business owners and the self-employed who are struggling to repay loans due to COVID-19 damages, aiming to support their normal business operations and recovery.

This agreement, the first of its kind signed by a local government nationwide, was established to improve the socio-economic welfare of local small business owners facing difficult management environments due to high interest rates and economic recession, and to strengthen recovery support by utilizing the financial support of the New Start Fund.

Through the signing of this agreement, both organizations will mutually cooperate to discover and promote various support projects for the new start of Busan’s small business owners. They will also actively collaborate in promoting and guiding the New Start Fund’s debt adjustment system through available online and offline channels.

As the first collaborative project, the city and the New Start Fund will more than double the scale of support for comprehensive health checkup costs, an existing happiness welfare project for small business owners promoted by the city.

By investing 100 million KRW in project funds provided by the New Start Fund, the comprehensive health checkup cost for small business owners will be increased from 200,000 KRW to 250,000 KRW to ensure practicality, and the support scale will be doubled from 400 to 800 people.

Last year, the city promoted this project with the Busan Economic Promotion Agency, the project executing organization, supporting comprehensive health checkup costs of 200,000 KRW per person for 400 small business owners.

Additionally, both organizations plan to continuously discover excellent cooperative business models that can collaborate with various recovery support projects of the Busan Small Business Comprehensive Support Center, a customized comprehensive platform for small business owners operated by the city, and expand collaborative projects.

Mayor Park Hyung-jun said, “This agreement is like a timely rain that can expand support projects for local small business owners who are struggling in a difficult economic environment due to the recession. I sincerely thank the New Start Fund and the Korea Asset Management Corporation for sharing the will to strengthen support for local small business owners with Busan City, the first in the nation, and we will continue to discover various forms of collaborative projects to create excellent cooperation models.”