The ruling and opposition parties, the Welfare Committee, passed an agreement to “restore the child allowance to its original state by transferring the Future Fund”

(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Kwon Hee-won = On the 13th, the National Assembly Health and Welfare Committee decided, through agreement between the ruling and opposition parties, to request the government to restore the basic child allowance and maternity support funds transferred to the future response fund in next year's budget to the general account.

At the plenary meeting of the National Assembly, the National Assembly's Health and Welfare Committee decided to add additional opinions related to the future response fund management plan with the following content in next year's budget plan and fund management plan for the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, and the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency.

As a result of discussions by the Budget and Settlement Review Subcommittee, which continued from the previous day until the early morning of this day, the Welfare Committee agreed to present a subsidiary opinion that the Ministry of Health and Welfare should prepare a plan to restore the Future Response Fund's 2027 basic child allowance payment project and maternity support project to general accounting in consultation with the financial authorities.

In addition, the Future Response Fund was asked to increase the budget for regional, essential, and public medical infrastructure expansion, investment in gene therapy technology commercialization, and laying the foundation for revitalizing patient treatment, and prepare a plan to transfer all of them to general accounting along with the field expansion and foundation construction project for physical artificial intelligence (AI)-based care robots newly allocated to the fund.

In addition, they requested the government to pay increased benefits for childbirth and childcare support starting from the first half of next year, and to revise the Child Allowance Act so that child allowances can be paid to all children under the age of 13 from January of next year.

In addition, the Welfare Committee passed a budget increase of KRW 8.7657 trillion from the original plan, including KRW 3.3945 trillion in national support budget for long-term care insurance for the elderly, to the Special Committee on Budget and Accounts.

The budget to strengthen the public nature of regional base hospitals, such as supporting labor costs for essential medical personnel at local medical centers and increasing the operating cost of Red Cross hospitals, was increased by 225.6 billion won, and the election support budget of 460 million won was completely cut due to the non-registration of candidates for the 2027 World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General election.

The fund management plan, including the National Pension Fund, was approved at an increase of 311.9 billion won compared to the original plan.