Former ministers of South Korea's budget and planning agency recommended that surplus tax revenue generated by the semiconductor boom be channeled into a future response fund to expand the country's growth engines. They also called for stronger planning functions that encompass structural reform and long-term strategy, not fiscal policy alone.
The Ministry of Planning and Budget said on the 1st that Minister Park Hong-keun held a policy meeting with former ministers of the agency in Seoul on the afternoon of the 30th of last month.
The gathering was arranged to hear from former ministers who led the agency from 1999 to 2008 and to gather their views on the fiscal policy, structural reform and long-term strategy pursued by the current government.
Attendees included Chin Nyum, the agency's first minister, along with former ministers Park Bong-heum, Kim Byung-il, Byun Yang-kyoon and Chang Byung-wan, as well as senior officials of the ministry.
Park said at the meeting that while the Korean economy is sustaining its recovery on the strength of semiconductor exports, it also faces structural risks including weakening growth potential and a "K-shaped" polarization.
He explained that the government is pursuing preemptive and bold investment and structural reform to address those risks, while at the same time drawing up a future strategy that looks 20 years ahead and beyond.
The former ministers said uncertainty at home and abroad remains high even as the artificial intelligence transition advances rapidly, and stressed that periods like this call for innovation that leads change.
In particular, they recommended using the surplus tax revenue from the semiconductor boom as a funding source for the future response fund in order to expand growth engines.
"Using the surplus tax revenue from the semiconductor boom as a springboard in the form of the future response fund, and opening up the country's future growth plate, is precisely what the ministry should be doing," the former ministers said.
They also called for a role that goes beyond any single field or individual ministry to coordinate government policy as a whole — the idea being that the agency should act as the government's "libero" for the sake of national development.
Views were also offered on the government's planned overhaul of local education grants.
The former ministers said they hope the overhaul, intended to respond to a changing education environment, will serve as an occasion to spread funding evenly across the entire education spectrum, from early childhood education to higher education and lifelong learning.
On the agency's longer-term role, they urged it to strengthen its capacity to design future strategy rather than simply allocate budgets.
"It is important to strengthen the planning function that prepares for the future, including structural reform, not just fiscal policy," the former ministers said, adding that policy effects can be maximized when fiscal policy and structural reform are interlocked and pursued in a consistent direction.
Accordingly, they urged the agency to tend to its "planning" and "budget" functions in balanced measure going forward.
Park said the meeting, the first such policy session with former ministers since the agency was relaunched, provided an opportunity to review the policies currently under way.
He added that the government will continue to pursue policies that expand growth engines and address polarization, drawing on the experience and recommendations shared by the former ministers.
