SEOUL, The Seoul city government has drawn up a record-high 6.4 trillion won (US$4.9 billion) supplementary budget bill to beef up welfare programs for vulnerable groups and the city’s global competitiveness, officials said Wednesday.
The extra budget bill, which was submitted to the city council for approval Wednesday, marks the biggest extra spending the city government has earmarked and the city’s second such bill this year.
Of the total budget, 401.1 billion won will be spent to expand welfare programs for vulnerable people and upgrade the city’s infrastructure, including free meal benefits for the homeless and the underprivileged, and repairing the city’s aged sewerage systems.
Another 383.4 billion won will go into building city infrastructure, including notably the construction of a 110,000-square-meter park near the National Assembly by 2025 and the diffusion of electric vehicles across the city.
A combined 926.2 billion won will be pumped into compensating businesses and people hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, and anti-infection regulations as well as treating and supporting COVID-19 patients, city officials said.
As of April, Seoul had debt of 10.9 trillion won, and the ratio of its debt against the city budget had stood at 22.62 percent as of end-2021.
Source: Yonhap News Agency