21st Ministerial Meeting on Boosting the Economy
20th Ministerial Meeting on the Economy of 2019
Government to Support R&D by Suppliers
Deputy Prime Minister Hong Nam-ki presided over the 21st Ministerial Meeting on Boosting the Economy, that is, the 20th Ministerial Meeting on the Economy of this year, held on August 14. Ways to boost exports, promote construction and encourage suppliers to work on R&D are main topics of discussion. DPM Hong talked about the July job data at the beginning of the meeting.
The following is a summary of Deputy Prime Minister Hong’s keynote address.
July job data
The economy added 299,000 jobs in July 2019, an 18 month high, led by the service sector. Jobs continued to increase in social welfare services and professional, scientific & technical services. Hotels & restaurants added jobs for a sixth consecutive month, and facility management services turned upwards for the first time in 22 months.
Employment increased among those in their late 20s, young adult employment rates being 44.1 percent. The employment rate among young adults has been rising for 14 months in a row, permanent jobs going up 438,000, a largest increase since January 2018. However, manufacturing jobs continued to go down amid falling exports, and employment among those in their 30s and 40s continued to decline partly due to falling population of the age group.
The government will work hard to boost the economy and improve the job market, being fully prepared for external uncertainties.
Boost exports
Exports have been weak, with the US-china trade conflicts continuing, the prices of semiconductors and IT devices falling, and the global economy slowing down. Exports slipped 8.5 percent in the first half from a year ago due to a slowdown in major items, including semiconductors, displays and IT devices. However, the good news is that new industries, such as environmentally friendly vehicles and bio-health, are growing and their exports are increasing. We will discuss ways to boost exports at this meeting, focusing on helping with corporate difficulties in the short run and strengthening industries in the long run, and will work to announce as soon as possible measures to boost exports.
Promote construction
The government will promote the construction industry by improving regulations, increasing transparency and safety, and supporting high value-added construction.
- Work on a total of 26 regulations to help reduce costs
- Improve the current system for construction bidding and work on increased safety
- Work for SOC projects worth 16.5 trillion won to be launched in the second half: public rental housing construction (5.1 trillion won), road construction (5.9 trillion won), railroad construction (5.2 trillion won) and others
- Work on the smart construction R&D worth 360 billion won, which is expected to improve productivity and safety by around 50 percent
- Work on overseas orders of high value-added construction, including smart cities
Encourage suppliers to work on R&D
We will improve R&D support for SMEs, so that they can expand their R&D capabilities to vast areas, in addition to materials, parts and manufacturing equipment.
- Expand the R&D support to cover the entire process of idea clarification to production scale-up: New industries, such as a system on a chip, future cars and bio-health, to receive over 100 billion won a year of government investment
- Work to make available various kinds of support, such as government investment matched with corporate investment
- Promote commissioned R&D and other ways of industry-university cooperation
Please refer to the attached pdf
