The South Korean ruling party and the government have agreed to draw up the biggest ever annual state budget of 605 trillion won ($518.7 billion) for 2022 to finance the country’s efforts to tackle the COVID-19 crisis, Report informs referring to The Korea Times.
This represents a slight increase from this year’s budget of 604.7 trillion won, including the regular budget of 558 trillion won and two rounds of COVID-19 response extra budget, they said.
“The party and the government shared their commitment to allotting sufficient resources needed to completely overcome COVID-19 through proactive expansionary financial policies and spur speedy economic recovery,” Rep. Park Wan-joo, the Democratic Party’s policy committee chief, said, following the party’s consultation with the government side.
According to Park, next year’s budget will include an additional 1.8 trillion won to compensate small business owners ravaged by anti-virus social distancing measures as the unexpected spread of COVID-19 variants weighs down the efforts to combat the coronavirus crisis.
“The 2022 budget will also finance a sharp expansion of infrastructure for contagious disease prevention... as well as the procurement of vaccines, enough to inoculate the entire nation against COVID-19 variants,” Park noted.