April 26, 2024

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Korea’s industry minister said on Feb. 26 the government is making all-out efforts to support exports, including various measures to maintain the competitiveness of the local chip industry.

“Due to the falling chip prices, (Korea’s exports) have been facing challenges since December through this month,” Industry Minister Sung Yun-mo said during an interview with Yonhap News Agency, claiming the government will establish comprehensive measures to support trade.

“To help local exporters, we will roll out any supportive measures if they can help the companies’ exports by even a dollar,” Sung added.

Korea’s annual exports surpassed US$600 billion for the first time, making Korea the world’s sixth-largest exporter.

The outlook for this year, however, has been cloudy due to the falling global price of chips, which are the mainstay export goods for the country.

The minister said while the latest decline in the chip prices followed the industrywide boom observed in the past two years, Korea still needs to make efforts to stay ahead of global rivals.

In line with such a belief, the Industry Ministry said earlier this month that it will move to lift regulations to pave the way for the country’s No. 2 chipmaker SK hynix to build a semiconductor cluster in the Seoul metropolitan area.

By Ram Garikipati and newswires (ram@heraldcorp.com)