Good News for South Korea

According to a recent FKI report (Federation of Korean Industries), there was good news for South Korea vis-à-vis investment opportunities, based on data assembled by the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). Indeed, in an article on the report, the region’s business investment growth “ranked no. 1 among the world’s developed market economies,” in 2010. Now, it just has to keep up this title. Indeed, South Korea’s facility investment escalated 21.3 percent on-year last year which rendered it the “highest increase among 23 countries checked and far higher than runner-up Estonia, which posted investment growth of 14.1 percent.” America came third and Britain, fourth.

South Korea Big Investments

South Korea’s investment in national accounts reached 116.8tr won, with a substantial amount of this being put into machinery and the remainder into transportation-related equipment. Indeed, machinery investment increased more than 26 percent on the grounds of the purchase of additional IT products, autos and manufacturing machinery in a one-year timeframe. Transportation sector investment increased 6.2 percent in 2010; most of this capital was spent on trucks and other autos primarily used for business.

2009 Figures

The financial crisis led to problems in 2009 such as a drop in facility investment in the OECD countries to 19.5 percent but with South Korea it was only 1.2 percent. As well in 2010 South Korea witnessed an additional 2.3 percentage points to last year’s economic escalation vis-à-vis investments in business, which, according to an FKI official, “represented a significant contribution to national growth.”