KCCI Chairman Calls on Economic Players to Go Back to Basics
- He warns another difficult year for this year for economy, even for exports


Looking back, last year has been a difficult one for all of us including the business communities, Park Yong-sung, chairman of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry(KCCI) said in his New Year's message.
The country's economy slowed down dragged down by contracted investment and consumption, despite high economic growth rates and strong fundamentals among OECD member countries. High oil prices and the weak U.S. dollar did not help the economy.
The government did all it can to fire up the economy with one measure after another, but there has been no sign of recovery.
Luckily, exports saved the economy from sliding further downhill by breaking $200 billion mark, making Korea 22th country in the world to do so. But they made only large corporations happy due to the lack of large investment with so many small and domestic-oriented firms taking back seats.
The political circle has not helped the situation, too, becoming a source of conflict of our society when they should have led the country out of trouble through harmony and live-and-let-live type actions
The KCCI chairman said all major economic players would have to go back to basics in order to solve the economic trouble as we see many dark clouds looming on the horizon this year, too, ranging from high oil prices, the weak dollar amid continuing downturn in domestic economy and suffering of small shop operators, while exports are not expected to do well either.
Our growth potential and fundamentals are still strong; we still have idle funds totaling 400 trillion won floating around, tens of trillion won in corporate funds, competitive technology and superior manpower. All it needs to expand the economy for major economic players to go back to their basics and do their given roles as they used to.
The government should do all it can to let market to revive on its own power, departing from its past practice of leading the economy. It should throw way all kinds of rules and regulations that are in the way of the market and replaced them with new laws and regulations to improve business environment. The government is called on to do all it can to build the social safety net who dropped out of survival competition in life.
Labor should change also as it takes cooperation between business and labor to hike per capita national income to $20,000, not crash like South America did. Labor should discard its past attitude that they are the weak ones, and act as partners to form a mature labor-management relations. They have to boost the productivity, which is about half of those in advanced countries. nw