[단독] Government emergency funds exposed… Spread it all to the disaster support

The government’s emergency funds accumulated for disaster response, etc., in accordance with the current government’s successive disaster support funding policy, have barely reached.

According to the Ministry of Strategy and Finance on the 21st, 89% of the purpose reserve, the government’s emergency fund, which was organized at a scale of 7 trillion won this year, has already been exhausted, and only 800 billion won remains.

Specifically, it is reported that 4.4 trillion won was lost as the third disaster subsidy for small businesses and special type workers (special high school), and the remaining 1.8 trillion won was invested in vaccine purchase costs and support for corona 19 quarantine.

It means that there is little national budget left to deal with in the event of a typhoon or flood damage in the future as the party government is using the government emergency funds for disaster subsidies. This raises the possibility of reorganizing additional budgets in case of emergency.

Reserves are budgets designed to be used when unpredictable events occur due to accidents or disasters. The Ministry of Knowledge Economy does not disclose exactly where this money was used and how much is left, but only discloses it in the settlement of the following year and is subject to post-mortem review by the National Assembly.

Initially, it was estimated that there would be 1.2 trillion won in reserve for purposes inside and outside the government, but more funds were drained than expected. The main reason for expenditure is disaster subsidies. At the end of last year, the government decided to draw 4.8 trillion won out of the 7 trillion won of the purpose reserve this year in order to finance the third disaster support fund.

It is pointed out that it may be difficult to respond to disasters such as typhoons and droughts in the future with the remaining emergency money. In fact, about 1.2 trillion won was spent on the purpose of repairing floods other than the purpose of responding to Corona 19. This is why there are concerns that a passport may again pull out an additional card that worsens the government’s fiscal soundness.

In response, an official in the Ministry of Information and Communication said, “I think that the current balance will be sufficient to respond to disasters in the future.”

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