Ministry of Science and ICT Cuts Cloud Voucher Budget by 57%
Government: "Shift from Broad Interest to Focused Support"
Industry Unsure About Cloud Service Expansion "Well..."
The budget for next year's cloud service dissemination and expansion support project has been drastically cut by more than half compared to this year. This is due to the government's policy to reduce the number of supported companies and focus investment, as awareness of service application has expanded through budget support so far. However, the industry believes that domestic cloud services have not yet been fully established as much as the government assumes. There is a forecast that the new dissemination of cloud services among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) will not proceed smoothly next year.
According to the Ministry of Science and ICT on the 26th, the budget proposal for next year's "Cloud Service Dissemination and Expansion for SMEs, etc." project is 4.673 billion KRW, a 57% decrease compared to the previous year (11.1 billion KRW). Also known as the "Cloud Voucher Project," this initiative supports matching between cloud service demand companies and supply companies, and reimburses 80% of the service usage fees paid by demand companies to the supply companies as government subsidies after the fact.
The significant reduction in next year's budget is due to a change in the government's support method. A Ministry of Science and ICT official said, "While budget support has so far been aimed at increasing interest in cloud services, we now intend to shift to a method that focuses support on companies with proven performance."
The industry responds that this policy is premature. Cloud services such as Software as a Service (SaaS) have not yet fully taken root domestically. A SaaS industry official said, "Compared to overseas, the dissemination of cloud services like SaaS in Korea is significantly low," adding, "With limited dissemination in public and large enterprises, the dissemination rate among SMEs is naturally low."
The government's budget reduction-oriented support policy is also evaluated as inconsistent with the increasing demand for the project. In particular, there were cases this year where companies participating in the project did not receive subsidies. The project does not allocate a fixed budget considering the characteristics of cloud services but operates on a post-settlement basis after verifying usage. Among the demand companies selected through the March announcement, priority support was given within the budget in order of high scores from first to third priority.
Last month, a notice was posted on the cloud voucher project support site stating that government subsidy budgets were exceeded and some adjustments to subsidies would be made. Additionally, emails with this information were sent to all supply companies such as Douzone Bizon and Naver Cloud, as well as second and third priority demand companies. The number of service contracts and supported companies continues to increase. The number of service contracts rose from 2,544 in 2021 to 3,286 last year, and the number of supported companies increased from 1,006 to 1,372 during the same period.
Due to the budget cuts next year, cloud dissemination is expected to shrink. A representative from the Innobiz Association, the operator of the voucher project, said, "Next year's project will proceed in the same form as this year but will be conducted in line with cloud strategies for the AI era," adding, "Detailed plans will be announced at the project announcement around late January to early February next year."
© The Asia Business Daily(www.asiae.co.kr). All rights reserved.
