A Study on Economic Impacts of Drainage Projects

배수개선사업(排水改善事業)의 경제적효과분석(經濟的效果分析)

This study is aimed at identifying the economic effects of drainage improvement projects. The total area of poor drainage is equivalent to 170,000ha, 13% of the total area of paddy field in Korea. The development of poor drained paddy is an urgent problem considering the low rate of self-sufficiency of food grain and the limitation of farmer's income increase. Rapid development of Korean economy has brought labor shoriage in rural farming sector. Accordingly farm mechanization is an important agricultural policy to hike labor productivity and to save production costs of rice farming. The expected economic benefits of the drainage improvement project are derived from increasing land productivity, expanding double cropped area and farming the farm mechanization base in paddy fields. The economic and financial rate of return of the project are considered very important decision making criteria for project implementation by resource allocation. Therefore this study covered benefit and cost analysis of the sampled area, the estimated financial rate of returns in $Buy{\check{o}}$ and Jinsung are represented 15% and 51% respectively and the economic rate of returns in both project area are also showing 1% and 26% respectively. The rate of return of the projects has showed an outstanding variance according to the locational and natural characteristics of the project area. As showing the above economic rate of return, $Buy{\check{o}}$ is very low Jinsung is very high. But the financial rate of return of both projects are considered comparatively high. Cosequently, the drainage improvement projects should be promoted from the view point of farm income increase to make narrow the income gap between rural and urban incomes and farm mechanization to solve labor shortage in the rural area.