Seoul: Facility investment in South Korea surged to a four-year high during the first nine months of this year, driven by the automotive and semiconductor sectors, data showed Sunday.
According to Yonhap News Agency, the overall facility investment index across all industries rose 4.3 percent in the January-September period from a year earlier, marking the largest increase since 2021, when the figure jumped 11.3 percent on-year, as per data from the Ministry of Data and Statistics.
The growth was primarily led by rising investments in the automotive and chip industries. Facility investment in the auto sector jumped 15.6 percent on-year, marking the largest increase in 25 years since 2000. The car industry has been expanding investment to build electric vehicle (EV) production facilities and enhance future competitiveness in autonomous driving and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.
Investment in semiconductor manufacturing equipment advanced 15.7 percent, the largest growth since 2021. Experts attribute this growth to the completion of memory chip inventory adjustments and the sector entering the so-called super-cycle driven by the AI paradigm shift.
In September alone, facility investment jumped 12.7 percent, rebounding from an on-month decline a month earlier.