By Kim Hyo-jin
Rival political parties are engaged in tough negotiations over the details of next year’s government budget in an effort to put an agreed bill to a vote at a National Assembly plenary session scheduled for today.
The ruling Saenuri Party and the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD) failed to complete a review of the government’s proposals for the 2016 budget by Nov. 30, the deadline set for the parliamentary review, due to wide differences.
They sought to come up with a revised budget plan to replace the draft government budget that was automatically referred to the plenary session. But they sparred over child care subsidies, regional allocation of social overhead capital (SOC) and adjustment of the budget for the special committee tasked with investigating the sinking of the ferry Sewol.
The parties are at loggerheads over how to finance the budget for free child care for three to five-year-olds. The NPAD argues that the government should support providing 500 billion won, as much as last year, from state coffers, pointing out that the scheme was set up to fulfill a policy pledge made by President Park Geun-hye. But the Saenuri Party claimed it should be covered by issuing local government bonds, considering improved local fiscal capacity, saying that 200 billion won is the maximum the central government can finance.
They are also divided over the 6 trillion won budget earmarked for the SOC. The opposition party criticized the ruling camp for allocating an excessive budget for Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province, describing it as “preferential budgeting.” It remains adamant that the SOC budget should be distributed fairly to other regions, including Chungcheong and Jeolla provinces.
The Saenuri Party is also pushing ahead with slashing the budget for the Sewol special committee, taking issue with its decision to look into the President’s whereabouts on the day the ferry sank. Meanwhile, the NPAD insists that the expenses of the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries be reduced as a punitive measure for its alleged interference in the activities of the Sewol committee, an independent body established in March to investigate the nation’s worst maritime disaster that resulted in the deaths of 304 passengers and crew, most of them high school students.