South Korea's finance minister reiterates that the government is working on a supplementary budget bill to give the economy a much-needed shot in the arm.<br />Kim Hyesung reports. <br />The government is drawing up an extra budget bill. <br />Finance minister Hong Nam-ki says the bill will focus on three areas, tackling fine dust, boosting the economy and job creation.<br />It will review requests from government ministries and submit a budget bill to the National Assembly by late April.<br />He said the size of the budget has not been set, but it will likely be lower than the IMF's recommended figure of nearly eight billion U.S. dollars. <br />That's zero-point-five percent of South Korea's nominal GDP, which the IMF said would be needed to reach the Korean government's growth target of between 2-point-six to 2-point-seven percent for 2019. <br />Hong emphasized that boosting the economy is critical amid slowing global growth that's dragging down the country's exports. <br />At the meeting, he added the government will change the review process for a preliminary feasibility study of government infrastructure projects, such as road construction.<br />Changes include slashing the timeframe of the review process from an average of 19 months to 10 months, lowering economic feasibility and increasing balanced development as evaluation variables for non-capital regions to help enhance balanced regional development.<br />Since 1999, infrastructure projects requiring a budget of more than 44 million dollars, with over 26 million dollars coming from state coffers have to undergo preliminary feasibility studies to ensure they avoid wasting taxpayers' money. <br />Kim Hyesung, Arirang News. <br />
