11.675 Trillion Won to be Invested in Science and Technology in 2014

The government plans to invest 11.675 trillion won in the R&D of science and technology next year. The amount is 2.2% larger than this year’s budget.

Prime Minister Jung Hong-won chaired the second National Science & Technology Council meeting and finalized the budget spending plan on August 2. The third Basic Long-term Plan for the Promotion of Agriculture and Bioengineering and the Guidelines for New R&D Opportunities were both announced during the meeting, too.

The budget execution plan is characterized by the removal of redundancies, less support for big businesses, and trimming those projects that show less progress in order to save 602 billion won of the budget. That portion is directed towards boosting creative economic activities and improving people’s livelihood.

For the former goal, 13 ministries invest 3.91 trillion won into a total of 157 projects, which is 5.9% up from a year earlier. The projects include technological R&D projects for start-up firms (141.4 billion won), utilization of developers by small and medium-sized enterprises (11.5 billion won), the Vitamin Project for inter-industry collaboration (16.9 billion won), and convergence projects between the information and communications industry and the software sector (50.4 billion won). The total investment in the four categories amounts to 1.01 trillion won.

In the meantime, 640.7 billion won will be spent on R&D for national safety and security and the resolution of social problems. Of that, 100.7 billion won and 76.3 billion won go to the fields of disaster prevention and food and drug safety, respectively.