April 26, 2024

• 

[THE INVESTOR] Foreign direct investment in Seoul established a new record high last year, repaying the capital city’s aggressive efforts to attract overseas investments, a city official said on Jan. 5.

As of the end of last year, the FDI amount that arrived in Seoul reached US$9.55 billion, up 12.1 percent from the previous record of US$8.52 billion in 2014, Suh Deung-rok, the head of the city‘s economic promotion headquarters, said. The figure accounted for 45 percent of US$21.3 billion in total FDI that came into the country last year, he added.

Notable is that green field investment in Seoul surged 36.5 percent to US$5.5 billion, according to Suh. A green field investment refers to an FDI form where a parent company builds its operations in a foreign country from the ground up.

Europe was the biggest investor in Seoul with US$4.3 billion in 2016, up 161 percent on-year.

(theinvestor@heraldcorp.com)