Incheon mayor pushes for additional W93.9b despite record national budget

Incheon Mayor Park Chan-dae returned to the National Assembly on Monday to seek additional funding during the parliamentary budget review process, even after the city secured a record level of national government support.

The visit reflected the city's assessment that a number of local priority projects remain either absent from the government's budget proposal or in need of further support.

The additional national funding Park is requesting totals 93.9 billion won ($69.7 million).

Park visited the Assembly on Monday and met in succession with Lee Gwang-jae, chairman of the National Assembly's Budget and Accounts Special Committee, Democratic Party of Korea floor leader Han Byung-do and People Power Party floor leader Jeong Jeom-sik, calling on all sides to include Incheon's key projects in the final budget.

The top priority in the lobbying effort is fiscal support for the stable launch of three new administrative districts — Jeomulpo-gu, Yeongjong-gu and Geomdan-gu — set to be established next July.

The 49 billion won needed to operate the newly created autonomous districts was not included in the government's budget proposal, and Incheon City called on the Assembly to add the funding during its review.

Park cited the legal basis for such support and pointed to the government's precedent of assisting other merged local governments, including Changwon and Cheongju, to argue for national-level fiscal backing.

Park also called for additional budget allocations in areas directly affecting residents' daily lives and transportation.

The city requested that the national subsidy rate for Incheon e-eum, the city's local gift-card program, be raised from the current 3–7 percent to at least 5–10 percent. It also sought 4.8 billion won to bring metropolitan express bus routes connecting Seoul and Incheon that have operated for three or more years under the quasi-public management system of the Metropolitan Area Transport Commission.

In the industrial and safety sectors, the city requested additional allocations of 2.4 billion won for expanding the I-Food Park public wastewater treatment facility, 1.5 billion won for a natural disaster risk improvement project, 1.8 billion won to upgrade the scoreboard at Incheon Football Stadium and 3 billion won for an AI-based pilot project to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector.

The quantum biotech mega-cluster development project was also included among the city's key budget requests.

Alongside the funding requests, Park conveyed concerns about the fiscal impact on local governments of the central government's proposed "Future Response Fund."

The city warned that if the fund's creation reduces the pool of local allocation tax revenue, local governments could see their independent revenue base shrink and lose flexibility in managing their finances.

Incheon City accordingly called on the Assembly to introduce safeguards, including excluding surplus domestic tax revenue from the fund's financing sources and removing any mandatory local co-funding requirements when the fund is used.

Incheon had earlier secured 7.09 trillion won in national funding in the government's budget proposal for next year, the largest amount in the city's history.

The figure was the result of sustained negotiations with government ministries and the Assembly to secure resources for four core strategic projects as well as transportation infrastructure and resident-focused initiatives.

The city judged that the nationally allocated funds alone would not be sufficient to advance all of its priority projects, and is now targeting the Assembly's budget review as a final opportunity to close the gap.

Park also asked the Assembly to ensure that nationally directed projects — including the GTX-B line and the Gyeyang–Ganghwa expressway — proceed on their original schedules.

"We have secured a record level of national funding, but to carry out Incheon's core projects without disruption, it is crucial to add during the Assembly's review the projects that were left out of the government's budget proposal," Park said.

On the Future Response Fund, he added, "The government and local governments must consult fully and put institutional safeguards in place to ensure that the fund's creation does not reduce local governments' independent revenue base."