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The draft 2009 national budget, the first for the Lee Myung-bak administration, is marked by a substantial increase in outlays for job creation, research and development and infrastructure investment.
Earmarked for job creation with public enterprise internship and global leader training included is W4.22 trillion (US$1=W1,207), a 23 percent rise from the current year. Thirty job creation projects in seven major economic zones across the country will be launched with W2.7 trillion allocated. Money also goes to 300 high school diversification projects including the establishment of autonomous private high schools.
¡ß Job creation
The government plans to provide financial aid to the training of about 120,000 people next year through varied internships, job training and setting up of venture firms.
A public agency internship will be introduced next year whereby 10,000 jobless young people will be given job training for between six months and a year with an average monthly salary of W1 million. Small and medium-sized enterprise internships will start next year as well, with the government paying 50 percent of wages up to W800,000 per month.
The administration plans to train 18,000 young global leaders next year including overseas interns, and 13,000 young leaders in such future industries as new and recycled energy. The Employment Information Service, affiliated with the Ministry of Labor, is set to provide 40,000 trainees with tailored job training under an annual ceiling of W2 million per person.
The draft budget envisages creating 30,000 jobs next year by setting up 50,000 venture firms over a five-year period. Some 112,000 social service jobs like daycare, 2,000 more than this year, are to be created next year.
¡ß More support for women and childcare
Beginning next year, all children up to the age of 12 are to be eligible for subsidies to the cost of eight required preventive inoculations including hepatitis B and Japanese encephalitis at public health centers and private hospitals and clinics.
Members of the group just one bracket above the bracket given subsistence aid from the government, or earning less than 120 percent of the minimum subsistence income, who have children up to four years old have been eligible to use childcare facilities free of charge. Beginning next year, that support is to be expanded to the 470,000 children of households that earn less than 50 percent of the nation's average income.
¡ß Tuition support for low income earners
Eligibility for aid in college registration fees for children of low-income earners is to be extended to sophomores beginning next year. The scope of aid for interest on student loans is also to be expanded.
Also included in the draft budget is the issuance of a W300,000 free lecture ticket per annum to each of the 350,000 primary and secondary school students in the group given subsistence aid and 10 percent of the group just one bracket above. With the tickets, they will be able to take extra-curricular lessons.
To strengthen public English education, the Ministry of Education and Science and city and provincial educational boards are to invite 700 children of overseas Koreans and foreign students majoring in Korean studies as native English-speaker volunteers and assign them to 1,531 rural primary schools that have yet to employ native speakers.
¡ß Support for workers and the unemployed
Non-regular workers and the long-term unemployed who participate in job training for two months or more will be eligible to borrow up to W1 million a month at a low interest rate through the Korean Labor Welfare Corporation. Ceilings for the loans will be W3 million for irregular workers and W6 million for the unemployed. The loans will be repayable over three years after a one-year grace period at 3.4 percent interest.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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