The National Assembly on Thursday approved a revision bill enabling the government’s financial compensation for small business owners ravaged by COVID-19 business restrictions.

The proposed revision of the Act on the Protection and Support for Micro Enterprises was passed by the assembly’s plenary meeting.

It called for the opening of the door for the government to recompense small merchants for business losses incurred by antivirus restrictions.

The new law stipulates the government compensate owners of small enterprises through an objective evaluation by a relevant committee when they suffer business losses due to state-issued business restrictions.

The restriction aimed at preventing the spread of an infectious disease such as COVID-19.

At the initiative of the ruling Democratic Party (DP), which advanced the bill, however, it had been formulated not to be applied retroactively.

This meant business losses inflicted so far since the initial local COVID-19 outbreaks early last year will not be covered by the new law.

Instead, the DP included a supplementary provision in the bill, requiring the government to make up for the past losses in the form of damage assistance.

During a parliamentary session, a day earlier, SMEs and Start-ups Minister Kwon Chil-seung estimated the combined size of business losses suffered by small merchants last year due to antivirus restrictions to about 3 trillion yen (2.6 billion dollars).

The sum could change depending on the method of calculation, he added.

The bill, however, ran into protests by lawmakers of the main opposition People Power Party (PPP) and the progressive minor Justice Party, who claimed it fall short of the expectations of struggling small merchants.

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The PPP and the Justice Party had pushed to include a clause that would allow retroactive compensation for financial damages caused by forced business closures.

The final bill did not include that provision, Rep. Choi Seung-jae, who has campaigned to include a retroactive compensation provision, insisted that the law “should not neglect the business damages that occurred in the past during the peak of the pandemic’’.