[Anchor]
Gyeonggi Province has cut more than 540 billion won in project budgets to overcome a fiscal crisis. Approximately 1,300 projects, excluding essential livelihood areas such as welfare and safety, are set to be scaled back or suspended.
Reporter Choi Ho-won has the details.
[Reporter]
Gyeonggi Province submitted its second supplementary budget bill for this year, totaling 42.242 trillion won, to the provincial council yesterday (the 19th).
On the revenue side, local tax collections dropped by more than 300 billion won due to a sluggish real estate market within the province, though this was offset by an increase in government subsidies aligned with national policies.
This means the funds available for the province's independent projects have decreased.
Ultimately, Gyeonggi Province slashed 546.5 billion won from the budgets of some 1,300 projects.
[Jung Doo-seok / Head of Planning and Coordination, Gyeonggi Province: Under the principle of protecting projects that must be preserved and cutting back as much as possible on those that can be reduced, we carried out the maximum level of structural adjustment realistically possible.]
There are 25 projects with budget cuts exceeding 5 billion won each, including approximately 23.6 billion won for election management support, about 19 billion won for compensation costs related to the Bugok local highway construction in Yangju, about 16.3 billion won for contributions to the Gyeonggi Credit Guarantee Foundation, and about 11.4 billion won for city bus public management support.
Projects providing local currency and other benefits to young workers at small and medium-sized enterprises, free breast cancer screening for women aged 20 and older, and support programs for small business owners and traditional markets are also being scaled back or suspended.
Instead, the province expanded budgets for essential livelihood projects that had only been funded for nine months in the original annual budget.
[Jung Doo-seok / Head of Planning and Coordination, Gyeonggi Province: We allocated 246.4 billion won for projects addressing vulnerable groups' livelihoods and residents' safety that were not reflected in the 2026 main budget. A total of 86.3 billion won was allocated to respond to the low birth rate crisis and essential welfare and medical projects.]
Gyeonggi Province's current debt stands at around 7 trillion won, and Gyeonggi Governor Choo Mi-ae declared a "provincial fiscal emergency" on the 5th.
Major campaign pledge projects by Governor Choo, such as transportation support for children and teenagers, were also omitted from this supplementary budget bill.
The Gyeonggi Provincial Council will hold an extraordinary session from the 1st to the 18th of next month to deliberate on the supplementary budget bill.
(Video by Jang Woon-seok | Photo courtesy of Gyeonggi Provincial Government)
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