Government Agencies Attempt to Obtain Budget without Proper Grounds

According to a review report on a 2006 budget plan and fund management released by the expert office under the Special Committee on Budget and Accounts of the National Assembly, which was obtained by Dong-A Ilbo yesterday, there was a slew of inadequate budget application cases, including one without lawful grounds, an overlapped budget application among the ministries, and an overestimated budget application.

This indicates that taxes paid by the sweat of the public’s brow have been squandered due to inappropriate budget requests and plans.

The results of an analysis of 50 controversial projects out of the 2005 budget bill conducted by Dong-A Ilbo and the Citizens’ Action Network (CAN), a civic group aimed at monitoring budgets, showed that major budgetary flaws in 2005 were also found in the 2006 budget bill.

Subsidy aid to KBS was also inadequate.

KBS asked for 9.1 billion won in national assets when drawing up its budget draft for 2006. The expert office said, “KBS did not allot its profits for money invested by the government on the grounds of smoothly conducting national projects in the black while at the same time, it requested governmental aid in the red on the same grounds.”

Choi In-wuk, the director responsible for the budget monitoring of CAN, criticized, “Despite the fact that budget experts as well as the Board of Audit and Inspection have pointed out that there are several problems, governmental agencies and their affiliated institutions are attempting to launch their projects by using ordinary people’s taxes.”

Kwang-Hyun Kim kkh@donga.com