Concerns over gift certificates

[Anchor]

With the 27th of thie month being a temporary public holiday, the Lunar New Year holiday has extended to six days.

The intention is to boost domestic consumption around the holiday, and a similar consumption promotion measure was announced today (1.9).

The government will release 50% more stock of 16 major Lunar New Year holiday items, such as fruits and meat, to induce price reductions.

Key agricultural, livestock, and fishery products will be discounted by 20%.

The government will spend 90 billion won on this initiative.

The National Agricultural Cooperative Federation and the National Federation of Fisheries Cooperatives will sell 'half-price' gift sets, and there will also be support measures for free video calls.

Additionally, another measure to boost consumption is the Onnuri gift certificate.

While it has been decided to issue the largest amount ever to revitalize traditional markets, the actual preparation on the ground is still lacking.

There are concerns that this may become just an empty measure, as reported by our reporter Choi In-young.

[Report]

Ahead of the Lunar New Year, the discount sale of Onnuri gift certificates will start tomorrow (1.10).

Similar to last year's Chuseok, the discount rate will be increased to 15%.

This is an opportunity to buy a 100,000 won gift certificate for 85,000 won.

However, this applies only to card-type and mobile-type certificates.

[Shin Seon-ja/Traditional Market Consumer: "If there are more discounts, I will buy more. If it's a 500,000 won certificate, the percentage discount will ultimately benefit me...."]

The issuance target for this year is 5.5 trillion won.

Compared to ten years ago, this is more than six times the amount.

It has become an essential payment method in traditional markets during the holiday peak.

[Lee Ok-yeon/Traditional Market Merchant: "When the discount increases, many people come to use the gift certificates."]

The problem is whether the historically largest issuance target will be properly managed.

The Onnuri gift certificate comes in three types: paper, mobile, and card.

While there are no issues with the paper type, the mobile type will be restricted from gifting starting the day after tomorrow (1.11), and the card type will be restricted from gifting starting next month on the 8th.

From the 15th to the 28th of next month, sales will be completely suspended.

This undermines the plan to promote consumption during the Lunar New Year with Onnuri gift certificates.

This situation arose because, starting in March, the operator of the Onnuri gift certificate program will be integrated into the Korea Minting Corporation, leading to data transfer issues.

The Minting Corporation needs to receive data from the existing operators, but the conflict over the transfer of business rights has prolonged the process.

[Lee Joo-young/Director of Gift Certificate Business, Small Enterprise and Market Service: "There may be some impact on corporate purchases, but we will try to maximize the use of card types to avoid any issues...."]

This year, the proportion of card and mobile types in the issuance target is over 75%.

This is KBS News, Choi In-young.