Seoul City to expand welfare budget next year to 7 trillion won

Seoul City said Wednesday that it would expand its welfare budget to 6.9 trillion won ($6.5 billion) next year, a 2.8 percent rise from this year.

The city submitted its budget plan for next year to the city council for approval.

The overall budget is 24.5 trillion won, a 997 billion won increase from this year.

Mayor Park Won-soon has promised to gradually increase the welfare budget to around 30 percent of the overall budget at the beginning of his term.

He said that the increase was unavoidable due to the expansion of welfare programs by the central government.

The budget plan, however, was settled on the condition that the central government would increase its subsidies for free child care in the city from 20 percent to 40 percent, but the central government objects to this.

Although the parliamentary welfare committee approved the public aid rise, the final passage of the bill has been pending for a year due to opposition from the Ministry of Strategy and Finance.

The central government has insisted that it would only raise the subsidy to 30 percent.

If set at 30 percent, Seoul may have to cover 80 billion won in extra costs.

Seoul has issued municipal bonds of about 200 billion won in September to finance the free child care program, as the central government continued to refuse to give further support.

By Lee Hyun-jeong (rene@heraldcorp.com)