Public Fees Are Too High

The Budget Committee of the National Assembly pointed out that the government ministries have increased the financial burdens of people and corporation by earmarking various fees too high, including the passport issuing fee, the national exam fee, college entrance exam fee, dissertation examination fee, various admission fees, and the goods transit fees.

The point was that the government has ignored the purpose of the substitution of income expense system, by which the government provides service or facilities and to levy the actual cost following the benefit principle, and has imposed extremely high fees, thus, making unnecessarily high income.

According to the report, for instance, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade earmarked 45.521 billion won of the amount of revenue, which is more than four times of the expenditure, although the expenditure budget of the substitution of income expense was 11.454 billion won. Especially, it was revealed that the amount of received revenue by collecting the fees for issuing passport amounted to 64.48 billion won.

In case of the Ministry of Education, the amount of received revenue by collecting fees for national exams, college entrance exam, and dissertation examination amounted to 18.26 billion won last year, even though the expenditure budget of the substitution of income expense was 9.97 billion won.

Park Sung-Won swpark@donga.com