South Korea to introduce second extra budget for 2025
The budget plan will include spending to help the recovery of people's livelihoods. PHOTO: REUTERS
SEOUL - South Korea's government will introduce a second supplementary budget for the year on June 19, after passing a 13.8 trillion won (S$13 billion) budget in May, to support an economy weighed down by US tariffs and sluggish consumer demand.
The budget plan will include spending to help the recovery of people's livelihoods and will be taken up at a cabinet meeting, a spokesperson at the presidential office said on June 16.
President Lee Jae-myung, who took office on June 4, has argued for expansionary fiscal policy and cash-like handout schemes to boost consumer demand, as the country's central bank in May slashed 2025's economic growth outlook to 0.8 per cent, nearly half the previous 1.5 per cent.
Among specific measures, spending to ease the burden of rising food prices will be included in the plan, Acting Finance Minister Lee Hyoung-il said at a separate meeting on inflation.
At the meeting, the government decided to extend tax breaks on oil products by two months to the end of August, in response to a surge in oil prices amid heightened geopolitical tension in the Middle East.
Financial support and import quota increases were introduced to stabilise rising food prices, which President Lee said were causing "too much pain", while tax cuts on car purchases were extended until the end of the year to support the auto industry.
South Korea's consumer inflation weakened to a five-month low of 1.9 per cent in May, below the central bank's medium-term target of 2 per cent and market expectations, as petroleum prices dropped 2.3 per cent from a year earlier, but prices of processed food products jumped 4.1 per cent and dining services rose 3.2 per cent. REUTERS
Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Business Times
36 minutes ago
- Business Times
Bank of Japan to consider slower bond taper as fresh global risks emerge
[TOKYO] The Bank of Japan (BOJ) will consider slowing reductions in its bond purchases next year under a quantitative tightening (QT) plan due on Tuesday (Jun 17), as the bank focuses on avoiding big market disruptions amid growing economic uncertainties. Those deliberations come as the BOJ faces fresh challenges in weaning the economy off a decade-long, massive stimulus that has kept interest rates ultra-low and left it with a balance sheet roughly the size of Japan's economy. At the same time, BOJ governor Kazuo Ueda is likely to signal the bank's readiness in continuing interest rate hikes, as it weighs risks from US tariffs against persistent domestic food inflation. 'Although developments in trade policies since early spring have had a larger impact on Japan's economy than we had expected, progress towards achieving our price target continues to gain momentum,' Ueda said in a speech on Jun 3, stressing the economy can withstand the hit from higher US tariffs. At its two-day policy meeting ending on Tuesday, the BOJ is widely expected to maintain short-term interest rates at 0.5 per cent. Markets are focusing on the board's review of an existing bond-tapering plan running through the March end of the current fiscal year, and the announcement of a new programme that will extend through fiscal 2026. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up Sources have told Reuters the BOJ will make no big changes to the current QT plan and consider slowing the pace of tapering from the next fiscal year. That would signal a preference to avoid disrupting markets in the wake of last month's spike in super-long government bond yields. In meetings with bond market players, the BOJ has received a sizeable number of requests to cut the quarterly taper size to around 200 billion yen (S$1.8 billion) – which some policymakers see as a reasonable ballpark figure, according to the sources. Ueda is expected to hold a news conference at 3.30 pm (0630 GMT) to explain the policy decision. The BOJ ended its yield curve control and began tapering its huge bond buying last year. It also raised short-term rates to 0.5 per cent in January on the view Japan was making progress towards durably achieving its 2 per cent inflation target. Under the current plan laid out last July, the BOJ has been slowing bond purchases by around 400 billion yen per quarter to halve monthly buying to three trillion yen by March 2026. If the BOJ were to cut bond buying by 200 billion yen per quarter from fiscal 2026, its monthly buying will fall to around two trillion yen by the March 2027 end of the business year. A Reuters poll showed just over half of respondents expect the BOJ to reduce the size of tapering from the next fiscal year. Markets are also focusing on Ueda's comments for clues on the timing of the next rate hike. The BOJ's policy normalisation is at a crossroads as steep US tariffs hurt Japan's export-heavy economy, forcing the board to cut its growth and inflation forecasts on May 1. But delaying rate hikes for too long could leave the BOJ behind the curve in dealing with inflationary pressure, as firms continue to pass on rising raw material and labour costs. Japan's core consumer inflation hit a more than two-year high of 3.5 per cent in April, well exceeding the BOJ's 2 per cent target, due to a 7 per cent surge in food prices that adds to prospects of steady wage hikes by firms faced with intensifying labour shortages. REUTERS
Straits Times
41 minutes ago
- Straits Times
US citizen dies in Russian attack on Ukraine capital, Kyiv mayor says
US citizen dies in Russian attack on Ukraine capital, Kyiv mayor says A U.S. citizen died during an overnight air attack on Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, the city's mayor said early on Tuesday. The mayor, Vitali Klitschko, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said the 62-year-old American was pronounced dead by doctors in the city. He gave no other details. "During the attack on Kyiv, a 62-year-old U.S. citizen died in a dwelling in the Solomianskyi district opposite where medics were providing assistance," Klitschko wrote. "Medics noted his clinical, biological death." Officials said Russian forces deployed drones and missiles in the attack on several districts of the capital. Officials said 12 people were injured in the attack. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Straits Times
41 minutes ago
- Straits Times
US news consumers are turning to podcaster Joe Rogan and away from traditional sources, report shows
US media personality Joe Rogan (centre) standing for a benediction after President Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th US President of the US on Jan 20. PHOTO: REUTERS US news consumers are turning to podcaster Joe Rogan and away from traditional sources, report shows Prominent podcasters like Joe Rogan are playing a bigger role in news dissemination in the United States, as are AI chatbots, contributing to the further erosion of traditional media, according to a report released on June 17. In the week following the January 2025 US presidential inauguration, more Americans said they got their news from social and video networks than from TV and news websites and apps - the first time that shift has occurred, the report said. Traditional US news media increasingly risks being eclipsed by online personalities and creators, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism said in its annual Digital News Report, which is based on an online survey of almost 100,000 people in 48 markets, including the United States. The trend is particularly acute among young Americans. Over half of people under age 35 in the US are relying on social media and video networks as their main source for news, the report found. Across the countries that the report surveyed, 44 per cent of people aged 18 to 24 said these networks are their main source of news. One fifth of a sampled group of Americans came across news or commentary from podcaster Rogan in the week following the presidential inauguration, the report found, while 14 per cent of respondents said they had come across former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson discussing or commenting on news during that period. Carlson now generates content across multiple social media and video networks. Top creators during that period also included Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro on the political right, and Brian Tyler Cohen and David Pakman on the left. The vast majority of the most followed commentators who discuss politics are men, the report found. 'These are not just big numbers in themselves,' wrote Nic Newman, Senior Research Associate at the Oxford, UK-based Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. 'These creators are also attracting audiences that traditional media struggle to reach. Some of the most popular personalities over-index with young men, with right-leaning audiences, and with those that have low levels of trust in mainstream media outlets, seeing them as biased or part of a liberal elite.' Despite their popularity, online influencers and personalities are seen as the biggest sources of false or misleading information worldwide, along with politicians, the report found. In the United States, politicians are considered the biggest sources of false or misleading information. Over 70 per cent of Americans say they remain concerned about their ability to tell what is true from what is false when it comes to news online, a similar proportion to last year. That compared to 58 per cent across all of the surveyed markets. Artificial intelligence is another emerging theme in news consumption, particularly for young people. Of respondents under age 25, 15 per cent rely on AI chatbots and interfaces for news each week, compared to 7 per cent of respondents overall, the report found. ChatGPT was the most mentioned AI service for news, followed by Google's Gemini and Meta AI. The trend is raising concerns about a potential loss of search referral traffic to publisher websites and apps, the report found, as chatbots eliminate the need for users to click on a story link. Text remains the most preferred way for people worldwide to consume news, although around a third say they prefer to watch the news online and 15 per cent say they prefer to listen. Younger people are much more likely to prefer watching or listening to the news. Social media platform X, formerly Twitter, is also becoming a more popular source of news in the United States, particularly among right-leaning users and young men, with 23 per cent of sampled Americans consuming news there - up 8 percentage points from last year. Rival networks like Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon are struggling to gain traction globally, with reach of 2 per cent or less for news. Levels of trust in news across markets are currently stable at 40 per cent, and unchanged for the last three years, the report found. The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism is funded by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Thomson Reuters. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
