The government has asked five public organizations to submit additional self-rescue plans, demanding stronger efforts to bring their debt problem under control, the finance ministry said Thursday.

Eighteen public organizations, put under close government monitoring due to their mounting debts, had to turn in their debt-reduction plans and other efforts to improve business efficiency by late January under the government-led public-sector “normalization” drive.

Based on the review of those submitted plans, the ministry asked five public organizations to draw up additional measures by the end of March because the proposed steps were “not satisfactory enough” to improve their financial status.

The five are LH, Korea Water Resources Corp., Korea Coal Corp., Korea Railroad and Korea Rail Network Authority.

The additional measures could include pulling back from uncompetitive sectors, business restructuring, introduction of competitiveness systems and cost-cutting efforts, the ministry said.

The other 13 public organizations including Korea Electric Power Corp. got the green light to go ahead with their submitted restructuring plans that the ministry said would improve their financial conditions down the road.

The ministry said it expects their debt increase to be restricted to 43.5 trillion won ($40.7 billion) until 2017, down by about 42 trillion won from the previous forecast of 85.5 trillion won.

More than half of the reduction would come from their business restructuring efforts, estimated at around 21.7 trillion won. Asset sales would account for 20.8 percent, or 8.7 trillion won, the ministry said. (Yonhap)