The finance minister Wednesday urged the main opposition party to back the government’s multi-trillion won supplementary budget bill awaiting parliamentary approval, citing lagging consumer spending in the wake of the recent Middle East respiratory syndrome outbreak.
The comments by Finance Minister Choi Kyung-hwan, come after multiple private meetings between Park Geun-hye administration officials and opposition leaders, where Park officials urged support for the extra budget bill, set to be put up for a parliamentary vote later this month.
But lawmakers of the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy and the minor opposition Justice Party repeated doubts over the ability of the budget bill to boost consumer spending and worries that it would only add to growing debt levels here.
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| Finance Minister Choi Kyung-hwan at the National Assembly, Wednesday. (Yonhap) |
The opposition also alleged that the ruling bloc was using the 11.8 trillion won ($10.3 million) extra budget to fill less-than-expected tax revenues, and to increase fiscal spending to appease voters with less than a year before the 2016 parliamentary elections.
The opposition repeated that it would back the bill if up to 5.6 trillion won were cut.
The opposition also demanded the cancellation of nine regional public construction projects that the extra budget seeks to fund. The projects were originally cut from the 2015 budget during parliamentary debates over this year’s fiscal bill late last year.
“I am sorry, as the man in charge of the country’s finances, for including more into the (extra budget) to make up for low tax revenues,” Choi said at the parliament’s finance committee earlier Wednesday.
“But forecasting exactly how well or poorly the economy will do next year is extremely difficult.”
Choi’s comments Wednesday followed a meeting Tuesday between the Saenuri Party’s new floor leader Rep. Won Yoo-chul and the NPAD’s whip Rep. Lee Jong-kul. Won urged Lee to support the supplementary budget, with the opposition official refusing.
By Jeong Hunny (hj257@heraldcorp.com)
