Moon seeks 10 trillion won, blueprint for jobs

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Moon seeks 10 trillion won, blueprint for jobs

Moon Jae-in’s administration is seeking a 10 trillion won ($8.8 billion) supplementary budget and a detailed road map that will be used to realize the jobs he promised during the presidential race.

Kim Jin-pyo, chairman of the advisory committee for state affairs planning, on Wednesday gave the Ministry of Strategy and Finance until the National Assembly’s special session next month for plans to execute the supplementary budget.

Although the exact amount envisioned wasn’t mentioned, the president has promised a 10 trillion won budget to solve the youth unemployment crisis.

“In order for the country’s economy to escape from the severe hardship, especially for young Koreans who are having hard time finding jobs, I would appreciate that we all work together as a team to solve them,” Kim said at a briefing with the Finance Ministry. “I would like you to put all heads together to come up with a supplementary budget that will be enough [to solve problems] as early as possible.”

The Finance Ministry responded positively, adding that the supplementary budget could be created with surplus from tax collections.

“We have collected 5.9 trillion won more taxes than we expected as of the end of March,” said Choi Young-rok, Deputy Finance Minister for tax and customs. “We don’t currently have exact data for April but it appears that there also were more corporate and value-added taxes collected last month. We will have the budget department to review final tax data.”

Kim Jin-pyo also said the government needs to create an environment where conglomerates, small and midsize companies prosper at the same time, while developing a new growth engine for the economy.

The advisory committee for state affairs planning said Wednesday that the Finance Ministry will develop plans to create more jobs in the public sector. The Finance Ministry will analyze the labor market to see if it can create jobs and discuss plans with related government branch.

As the advisory committee for state affairs prepares to be briefed by government branches, it appears many of Moon’s economic policies will follow the goals he set in his campaign.

On the campaign trail, Moon pledged to create 810,000 jobs in the public sector to solve the nation’s youth unemployment issue. Although youth unemployment is relatively low compared to other countries, it is still in the double digits. Last month’s unemployment rate for ages 15 to 29 was 11.2 percent.

Moon established a committee devoted to jobs in his first executive order. Last week, the Finance Ministry asked government branches what kind of impact they could make on the labor market.


BY KIM YOUNG-NAM [kim.youngnam@joongang.co.kr]



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