According to Yonhap News,
(SEJONG=Yonhap News) South Korea will focus on fostering the local engineering sector as one of the country's new growth engines, the government said Wednesday.
The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, and other government agencies unveiled a set of policies, including vocational training and system upgrades, for the segment.
Engineering is an industrial service of design, project management, maintenance and others, which are essential for companies to manufacture a product or construct a building from the beginning.
It is considered a high value-added sector that has a wide collaboration with various fields like physics, chemistry, mathematics, business and finance.
The global engineering market has been dominated by developed countries. The United States takes up 31.5 percent, followed by Canada with 12.6 percent and the Netherlands with 9.9 percent. South Korea accounts for only 2.4 percent of the global market.
"Engineering is a fundamental source of the entire industry," said Deputy Trade Minister Toh Kyung-hwan. "The government will give full support to the engineering sector to improve the country's competitiveness."
According to the plan, the government will set up a 3-D industrial plant at the state-run Engineering Development Research Center to give tailored vocational training.
It will also introduce programs from renowned engineering training institutions, including the U.S. PetroSkills and the French Institute of Petroleum, to give better opportunities to Korean students.
The government will develop engineering software for small and mid-sized firms, and encourage them to use the programs that enable companies to simulate their products at the first stage.
In July, the South Korean government announced a plan to foster the service industry, including additional tax rewards and incentives for research and development, to transform the nation's manufacturing-oriented economy amid growing concerns that Asia's fourth-largest economy has entered a low-growth cycle.
Over the past few years, its growth rate has remained around 2-3 percent, compared with some 4-5 percent growth in the 2000s, while exports, the key economic driver, have been in a deep slump for nearly two years.
brk@yna.co.kr
Copyrights Yonhap News. All Rights Reserved.
Reprint or redistribution without permission is prohibited.
Source: Yonhap News (Oct. 19, 2016)