ΆΓ  FDI Exceeds $12 Bil. in 1st 10 Months

KoreaTimes 2000.11.06  

Foreign direct investment here exceeded the $12 billion mark in the first 10 months of the year, well on the way to the annual target of $15 billion, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy said yesterday.

According to ministry officials, the amount of investments reported by foreigners last month was tallied at $1.75 billion, down 2.1 percent over the previous month.

However, this was enough to take the cumulative total to $12.2 billion for the first 10 months, up 18.7 percent over the corresponding period of last year, they explained.

The officials said that while there was a month-to-month decline in foreign direct investment in October, this was mainly because Korea chalked up a particularly strong month in September.

``We continue to see a trend in which the number of investments are increasing sharply, meaning that investments are being made in diverse areas,'' one ministry official said.

The 338 cases of foreign direct investment in October brought to 3,454 the number of cases for the year, showing an increase of a whopping 116.1 percent over the corresponding period of last month.

The largest investments in October went to Carrefour Korea with $360 million, and $332 million Japanese investors injected into Ssangyong Cement.

``We have been encouraged to see a strong increase in investments from Japan which reached $528 million last month, taking the total for the January-October period to $1.9 billion, 13.3 percent more than the $1.7 billion for all of last year,'' one investment official said.

On the other hand, investments from the United States and Europe, which have risen since the financial crisis of 1997, fell by 2.1 and 31.7 percent respectively, the monthly MOCIE report revealed.

By sector, foreign direct investment in manufacturing rose 16.5 percent to $6.2 billion with those in services increasing 22.4 percent to $6 billion, it said.

Overall, investments of less than $5 million were made in 3,255 cases in the first 10 months of this year, a testimony to the fact that more foreign capital is heading into small and medium-size industry.