Interior ministry sets distance-weighted index to steer support to regions

The interior ministry said Tuesday that the cabinet approved an enforcement decree establishing a "local-preference index" that will classify all 229 cities and counties into four tiers, giving central agencies an objective standard for directing support away from the Seoul metropolitan area.

The index combines each district's geographic distance from Seoul with 44 balanced-development indicators compiled by the Presidential Committee for Decentralization and Balanced Development. Distance carries a weight of 1 and the social and economic indicators 0.5.

Under the classification, 58 districts fall into the first tier, 55 into the second, 55 into the third and 61 into the fourth. Areas facing population decline are to receive one tier's worth of additional preference, according to Chung Jong-hoon, director-general of the ministry's local finance bureau.

"Population-declining areas will be treated more favorably by one tier than the tier that results from their index calculation," Chung said.

The government has said the index will be applied to policies and programmes from 2027, and the ministry will work with other agencies to extend it beyond subsidy programmes into tax, regulatory and procurement decisions. In one example cited, the national subsidy rate for local-love gift certificates would rise to 9 percent if a population-declining area falls into the fourth tier, with rates of 3, 6, 8 and 9 percent across the four tiers.

A separate notice setting out how the index is calculated and managed will be open for public comment for 12 days from Wednesday. The classification and the operating rules will be finalized after that comment period.

"The government has drawn up the local-preference index for the first time to overcome the Seoul-centered system and strengthen the growth base led by the provinces," Interior Minister Youn Ho-jung said. "The ministry will work with the relevant agencies so the index is used widely across national policy."

Scores will be recalculated each year in line with the update cycles of the underlying data, and any change to a district's tier requires deliberation and a vote by the balanced-development committee. Individual scores and rankings will not be made public, the ministry said, citing concern that publication would brand areas as lagging and set local governments competing against one another.