By Jihoon Lee<\/p>\n
SEOUL, July 14 (Reuters) – South Korea pledged on Tuesday to swiftly advance artificial intelligence investments to bolster economic performance, as it raised its 2026 \u200cgrowth forecast to a five-year high of 3.0% on the back of a \u200cglobal semiconductor boom.<\/p>\n
In semi-annual economic policy plans released earlier, the finance ministry projected this year’s economic growth at \u200b3.0%, the strongest since 2021 and up from the previous forecast of 2.0% as well as last year’s 1.1% pace.<\/p>\n
The ministry said it would push policies aimed at three key goals, including lifting the economy’s potential growth rate to 3% from an estimated level below 2%.<\/p>\n
As part \u200cof that effort, the government \u2060will fast-track three “mega projects” unveiled last month covering semiconductor, AI data centre and physical AI investments, the ministry said.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, the government said \u2060it would increase 2027 budget spending by at least 10% to more than 800 trillion won ($532.73 billion), prioritising the mega projects and drawing support from stronger tax revenues from the semiconductor sector.<\/p>\n
“While \u200brobust \u200beconomic indicators, such as exports, driven by a \u200bsemiconductor boom are clearly opportunity factors, \u200cthere remain tasks that our economy needs to overcome at the same time,” Vice Finance Minister Lee Hyoung-il said.<\/p>\n
Asia’s fourth-largest economy delivered its strongest growth in nearly six years last quarter, driven by booming chip exports amid global surge in AI investment.<\/p>\n
The ministry also set targets of making South Korea one of the world’s four largest exporters and raising gross \u200cnational income per capita to $50,000, from an expected $40,000 this \u200byear. The country currently ranks among the world’s top \u200bfive exporters.<\/p>\n
It pledged measures to counter \u200bpersistently high inflation, a weak currency and elevated bond yields linked to \u200cthe Middle East conflict, including fuel price \u200bcaps, extended foreign-exchange regulatory \u200beasing and low-cost policy loans in the second half of the year.<\/p>\n
Inflation was forecast at 2.6% for 2026, up from the previous 2.1% seen in January, amid \u200bhigh oil prices. That would \u200cbe faster than the 2.1% pace in 2025 and the quickest since 2023.<\/p>\n
For \u200b2027, the ministry forecast economic growth at 2.2% and inflation at 2.2%.<\/p>\n
($1 = \u200b1,501.7000 won)<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Jihoon LeeEditing by Shri Navaratnam)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jihoon Lee SEOUL, July 14 (Reuters) – South Korea pledged on Tuesday to swiftly advance artificial intelligence…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,3341,54347,11335,17511,698],"class_list":["post-104880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-economic-growth","tag-economic-performance","tag-finance-ministry","tag-global-semiconductor","tag-south-korea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}