Gyeonggi Province Establishes Strategy to Foster Materials, Parts & Equipment Industries for 'Technology Independence'

[Suwon Ilbo=Reporter Park No-hun] Gyeonggi Province announced on the 13th that it will pursue establishment of a 'Basic Plan for Fostering Materials, Parts & Equipment Industry in Gyeonggi Province' to enhance competitiveness and promote localization of the materials, parts and equipment industry—the backbone of manufacturing and a key element of competitiveness.
This is intended to preemptively respond to Japan's export restrictions and to establish a 'master plan' at the provincial level to escape from an externally dependent industrial structure.

In particular, the province focused on presenting a vision for 'independence' of the materials, parts and equipment industry tailored to regional characteristics within the province, and strategically promoting technological independence and enhanced competitiveness through development of the materials, parts and equipment sectors.
The basic plan will include concrete mid- to long-term plans to realize three major strategies under the goal of 'Building a Gyeonggi-Style Materials, Parts & Equipment Innovation Ecosystem': ▲Selection and development of core strategic products ▲Establishment of large-small business cooperation foundation ▲Promotion of industry-academia-research clusters.

To this end, starting from March of this year, Gyeonggi Province will form and operate a 'Gyeonggi Province Materials & Parts Industry Development Strategy Task Force Team' composed of relevant departments, affiliated public institutions, and related experts, and will pursue specific implementation tasks for each strategy and seek practical measures through diverse consultations and reviews.

Through the Task Force Team, the province will gather opinions and conduct discussions to prepare detailed implementation plans, hold expert group discussions by department for detailed implementation measures and discussion of development direction, and establish coordinated cooperation systems for overlapping tasks.
Additionally, the province plans to hold regular inspection meetings to manage key implementation tasks and continuously discover substantive support measures for the materials and parts industry through gathering field opinions from related companies and organizations.

The province will complete the basic plan by June and subsequently proceed with full-scale development projects. In particular, through the Task Force Team, the province plans to continuously identify problems and improvement areas to develop alternatives and ensure that effective measures and projects are implemented.

Kim Gyu-sik, Director of Economic Planning, stated, "Gyeonggi Province is the center where 35% of the nation's materials, parts and equipment industry is concentrated," and added, "We will seize this crisis as an opportunity and swiftly and substantively pursue mid- to long-term measures to lay the foundation for strengthening the competitiveness of the materials, parts and equipment industry."

Since Japan announced export restrictions on July 1 of last year, the province has actively responded by issuing an emergency response plan on the 4th of the same month, installing a damage report center, operating an emergency response task force, supporting an emergency supplementary budget of 32.6 billion won including provision of special management funds of 10 billion won scale, and more.
In November of last year, the province enacted the 'Gyeonggi Province Materials & Parts Industry Development Ordinance' to establish legal grounds for systematically supporting the development of materials and parts industry in the province. In March of this year, through organizational restructuring, the province newly established the 'Materials & Parts Industry Team' under the Specialized Business Support Division of the Economic Affairs Bureau to take full charge of policy formulation related to materials, parts and equipment industry development and coordination of public-private cooperation measures.