Foreign Investments Increased for 3 Months

The foreign investment in January increased 50 percent compared to the same period of last year, recording the increase of three consecutive months. The net foreign investment recorded minus until October last year but has increased since then for three months.

Park Bong-Kyu, the director of the international cooperation and investment bureau, said that "foreign investment has increased by the careful expectation for the recovery of the world economy and the positive evaluation of the Korean economy."

The Ministry of Commerce, Energy and Industry anticipated that the foreign investment would increase by 9-26 percent up to 13-15 billion dollars. Foreign investment has rapidly increased after the foreign exchange crisis and reached its peak of 15.9 billion dollars in 2000.

The major investment during January includes the factory construction of Japan`s YKK that produce zipper, the expansion of a French electric circuit factory, the infra construction of the Incheon Airport by the U.S. AIT, and the increased investment of the Moodys.

71.3 percent of the total investment was composed of electronics, metals, and chemistry, compared to 28.7 percent of the service sector.

Two of the investments were more than 100 million dollars and the total number of the investment less than 5 million dollars was 169. The U.S. ranked at the top for the investment recording 548 million dollars, taking 86.4 percent of the total investment, followed by EU (5.2 percent) and Japan (3.3 percent).

Yeon-Su Sin ysshin@donga.com