South Korea's top business groups yesterday unveiled large-scale capital expenditure plans in response to a direct appeal from President Roh Moo-hyun.
Roh urged the firms to boost investment to lift the economic gloom here and alleviate rising unemployment.
The Samsung Group came back with a pledge to invest 19.3 trillion won (US$16.5 billion) this year alone, 1.9 trillion won more than initially planned, to help boost the sagging domestic demand and strengthen its competitiveness.
Other group, including South Korea's second-largest conglomerate, SK, and Hyundai Motor, followed suit with new pledges of stepped-up expenditure.
"As the top business firm in this country, we must play a key role in helping put the economy on track to recovery," Samsung Group chairman Lee Kun-hee was quoted as saying in a company statement.
"We have prepared this comprehensive package in order to link the strong performance of the company with higher competitiveness, support small and mid-size businesses and help our neighbors in need," he said.
Samsung also said it would invest 23.5 trillion won next year and 27.2 trillion won in 2006. It said it would hire 17,000 new employees this year, 2,000 more than last year, to help ease the current job pinch for young people,
including university graduates.
Most of the 70 trillion won of investment for this year and the next two years will go to the company's core businesses, with 22 trillion won set aside for semiconductors, 10 trillion won for TFT-LCD display and two trillion won for telecom and information.
LG Group said it would invest 9.8 trillion won this year, up 36 percent from last year, including 7.2 trillion won in production facilities and 2.6 trillion won in research and development.
The country's second-largest conglomerate said it would invest 50 trillion won for the five-year period until the end of 2008, focusing on displays, petrochemicals, batteries and bio-engineering. It also said it would hire 11,000 new employees this year.
Hyundai Motor said it would invest a combined 28.4 trillion won by 2007 in its domestic operations and business partners to fullfil its goal to become the world's fifth-largest carmaker.
The carmaker plans to spend 5.88 trillion won this year and an average 5.5 trillion won per year from next year till 2007, in addition to 1.6 trillion won in annual subsidies for suppliers.
The group also plans to hire between 5,000 and 6,000 new employees this year, up from the initially planned 4,000 workers.
SK Group said it planned to invest somewhere between 15 and 20 trillion won by 2007 in research activities for its core businesses of energy, information and telecommunication and bioengineering.
The company said the investment will help create about 90,000 new jobs by 2007.
The announcement of investment plans came three days after Roh met business leaders and appealed for more investment to ease unemployment and boost slow domestic demand.
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