6 tril. won to be injected into commercial banks

The government vowed to complete the on-going bank reform by injecting a maximum of 6 trillion won in public funds, thus ending the financial and corporate reforms within the year.

Moreover, the government plans to enact a cooperative agreement with financial institutions within this month and complete the investigations of the owners of the insolvent companies within the year to determine the cause of their failures and recover debt claims.

The government also plans to lower the non-performing loan ratio of banks to under 5% and increase their BIS asset adequacy ratio to over 10% by the end of next year.

The government confirmed the future direction of economic policy after consecutively holding a meeting on the 12 core reform projects in the four major sectors with president Kim Dae-Jung and an economic policy coordination meeting with finance and economic minister Jin Nyum on Wednesday. Economic policy director Han Sung-Tak of the Ministry of Finance and Economy asserted that in the worst-case scenario, 40 trillion won of public funds from borrowings and other methods would be raised to end the bank reform and injected into banks by the end of November, even if National Assembly approval for the additional funds is delayed.