홍남기 "역성장 송구...민간투자 촉진 대책 5~6월 중 마련"

Korea's finance chief has also addressed the nation's sluggish economy today,... highlighting necessary measures to boost domestic growth.
Our senior economics correspondent Kim Hyesung has more... on what he said during a meeting with economy-related ministers.
South Korea's finance minister has admitted that the zero-point-three percent fall in GDP growth in the first quarter, the slowest pace since the global financial crisis, is concerning, and vowed to come up with measures to boost private investment.
"I feel it heavily that GDP growth fell zero-point-three percent on-quarter on falling exports and investment.
We will strengthen on-site communication with large companies and medium-and-small-sized companies and come up with an investment plan for various sectors, including system memory chips, by around May and June."
System memory chips are a type of non-memory chip, used for data processing and image sensors for driverless cars and AI.
Korean chipmakers lead the global market for memory chips like Nand Flash and DRAM, accounting for over 60 percent of global marketshare.
But they only take 3 percent of the global non-memory chips market, which recorded 310 billion U.S. dollars of revenue last year, more than double that of memory chips.
Samsung also announced plans last week to invest 116 billion dollars in non-memory chips by 2030.
On rising global oil prices following the U.S. announcement to end exemptions on Iranian oil sanctions, Minister Hong said the government will help boost the number of discount gas stations and help local petrochemical companies diversify oil imports.
To help support economic growth, the finance minister again emphasized the need to pass the 5-point-nine billion dollar extra budget bill at the National Assembly as soon as possible and said there is no plan to revise government's GDP growth forecast of between 2-point-six and 2-point-seven percent as of now.
Kim Hyesung Arirang News.