Business Groups to Increase Investment by 25%

The nation’s 30 largest business groups, including Samsung, Hyundai Kia Automotive Group, LG and SK will increase their new employment by 22.9 percent from a year ago to 81,000 and investment by 25.2 percent from the previous year to 94.5 trillion won.

The nation’s businesses decided to consider additionally increasing employment and investment.

The Federation of Korean Industries held an emergency meeting of its board of chairmen at its headquarters building in central Seoul, Wednesday. In its announcement, the federation said, “Businesses will take the lead in sharing the economic burden on people and help Koreans overcome economic difficulties.”

According to the announcement, the nation’s 30 largest business groups, which already hired 42,000 new employees in the first half, will recruit an additional 39,000 in the second half. The combined number of job creation is 3.9 percent larger than the annual job creation goal of 78,000 promised by the FKI in April. They will also invest 94.5 trillion won, very close to the initially planned amount of 94.9 trillion won.

In an effort to boost the nation’s competitiveness, the board decided to make aggressive investment and increase investment and employment.

The Council on Corporate Investment, consisting of senior executives of major corporations, will monitor the progress in investment and employment of the nation’s 30 largest business groups, and encourage businesses to make an investment of 10.1 trillion won, which was promised at the first Investment Fair, earlier than scheduled. It will also encourage the holding of job fairs through which representative corporations in each sector recommend outperforming suppliers to job seekers from September.

At the same time, in an effort to stabilize prices, the FKI will wage a “10-10 Campaign” under which all corporations will improve productivity by 10 percent while cutting costs by 10 percent. It will also pursue another campaign through which corporations will encourage their employees to spend their vacation at local resorts, so as to energize local economies.

In its “Resolution to Boost the Nation’s Economy,” the board said, “We agreed that we should not sit idle while seeing the economy collapse. We’re determined to play the due role of businesses, closely cooperating with the people and taking the lead in overcoming economic difficulties.”

Present at the meeting were FKI Chairman Cho Seok-rae, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, Kumho-Asiana Group Chairman Park Sam-koo, Hanjin Group Chairman Cho Yang-ho, Daelim Honorary Chairman Lee Jun-yong, Doosan Construction & Engineering Chairman Park Yong-hyeon, DongYang Chairman Hyeon Jae-hyeon, Eagon Chairman Park Yeong-joo, Samyang Chairman Kim Yoon, and FKI Vice Chairman Jeong Byeong-cheol.

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