Invest KOREA

According to Yonhap News,

(Sejong = Yonhap News)

About 10 trillion won (US$9.45 billion) worth of corporate investment projects will be launched until the first half of next year as the government is pushing to remove unnecessary restrictions holding up business spending, the finance ministry said Wednesday.

The government has unveiled a set of measures this year aimed at encouraging corporate investment by getting rid of regulations that businesses cited for difficulties in implementing their spending plans.

According to the ministry, businesses plan to launch five large-scale projects worth a combined 10.3 trillion won starting this month until the first half of next year.

In particular, SK Global Chemical, an affiliate of SK Innovation, will start a project to build a paraxylene plant with an annual production capacity of 1 million tons in cooperation with a Japanese company.

This is worth about 1 trillion won in investment, which has been delayed due to regulations related to leasing land to foreign-invested companies.

S-Oil, a major South Korean oil refiner, will also start an 8 trillion won project next January to build plants in an industrial complex located in the southeastern part of the country. The project became possible as the government decided to move existing public facilities at the site underground to make room for the construction of new plants.

The projects are among those that the government found to be stalled due to regulations, which were removed or eased to speed up corporate spending this year.

The government has unveiled investment-boosting measures three times this year in which it received complaints and recommendations from individual businesses over regulations deemed to be stumbling blocks to their pursuit of investments.

Through such efforts, the government has found 27.5 trillion won worth of investment projects that companies have delayed or been hesitant to start due to regulations and other red tape.

The Park Geun-hye government vows to remove what it calls a "thorn beneath the fingernails," indicating that it will work hard to get rid of unnecessary regulations that have made it hard for companies to venture out and invest.

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