S. Korea's parliament passes 13-bln-USD extra budget to tackle COVID-19

SEOUL - South Korea's parliament on Thursday passed 14.9 trillion won ($13.1 billion) worth of extra budget bill to tackle the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The bill was passed through the unicameral National Assembly by 242 to 6 with 11 abstentions.

With the passage, the government planned to implement the relief grant package, the fourth of its kind, worth 20.7 trillion won ($18.3 billion).

Under the aid package, about 7.3 trillion won ($6.4 billion) will be spent on offering relief grants, ranging from 1 million won ($880) to 5 million won ($4,400), to the self-employed and microbusiness owners who were hit hard by the pandemic.

Mom and pop stores and small merchants suffered a drop in revenue as the government tightened social-distancing guidelines to contain the virus spread.

About 3.6 trillion won ($3.2 billion) was allotted for the jobless and other vulnerable employees, such as subcontract workers and freelancers, to help them ride out hardship from the pandemic.

Some 4.2 trillion won ($3.7 billion ) was earmarked to finance the country's vaccination campaign.

In the latest tally, the country has administered COVID-19 vaccines to over 730,000 people with 2,691 fully vaccinated.

The country reported 430 more cases of COVID-19 for the past 24 hours, raising the total number of infections to 100,276. The total cases topped 100,000 since the first case was found here in January last year.