[2025 Supplementary Budget] Korea Federation of Micro Enterprises Welcomes Budget Bill... Hopes It Signals Economic Recovery

5 Trillion Won Allocated for Support of Small Business Owners and SMEs

The Korea Federation of Micro Enterprises has expressed its support for the government's decision to approve the supplementary budget bill.

On April 18, the Federation released a statement regarding the supplementary budget, saying, "We believe that the allocation of approximately 4 trillion won?a significant portion of this supplementary budget?for supporting small business owners demonstrates an appropriate response from the Ministry of SMEs and Startups and the entire government to the crisis facing small business owners."

On this day, the government held a Cabinet meeting and approved a supplementary budget bill totaling 12.2 trillion won. This supplementary budget, which was drawn up to address disaster response, trade risk management, and support for the recovery of people's livelihoods, includes a confirmed budget of 5 trillion won from the Ministry of SMEs and Startups for supporting small business owners and SMEs.

Notably, new initiatives have been introduced, such as the "Small Business Burden Relief Credit" program for businesses with annual sales of 300 million won or less, the "Mutual Growth Payback" program that reimburses 20% of card spending, and the "Small Business Biz Plus Card," which issues a purchase-only credit card with a limit of 10 million won to small business owners with mid- to low-credit scores. In addition, existing programs will be expanded, including an additional 500 billion won in policy funds for small businesses, a 2 trillion won increase in new guarantees from regional credit guarantee foundations, the expansion of the Hope Return Package program, and promotional events for digital Onnuri gift certificates.

The Federation stated, "We expect that the introduction of new programs and the expansion of existing ones will help improve the business environment for small business owners. In particular, the plan to provide up to 500,000 won in credit to 3.11 million small business owners with annual sales of 300 million won or less reflects our longstanding proposal to ease the fixed cost burden on small business owners. We believe that the broad scope of beneficiaries will lead to a high level of satisfaction with the program." The Federation added, "We also view the introduction of the Biz Plus Card as a response to our request to support low-credit small business owners who have been excluded from policy support."

The Federation further commented, "Since this supplementary budget has been described as an emergency measure rather than an economic stimulus, there are limitations in its ability to immediately resolve the unprecedented crisis faced by small business owners due to the worst-ever domestic demand slump.We hope that the new administration will draw up an additional large-scale supplementary budget, and that this supplementary budget will be processed quickly so that tangible benefits can be delivered to small business owners as soon as possible, serving as a catalyst for the recovery of the small business sector."