SEOUL: The Korean finance ministry said Wednesday it will provide low-interest loans of 17 trillion won (US$12.22 billion) next month for corporate investment in the semiconductor industry and will push to extend tax benefits for investment in strategic technologies, state news agency (Yonhap) reported.

It is part of execution plans for the comprehensive support package worth 26 trillion won announced by President Yoon Suk Yeol last month and designed to support the key industry amid intensifying global competition.

Under the plan, the government will launch a financial support programme worth 17 trillion won in July to be available for domestic and foreign companies that make a fresh investment in the chip industry at home, according to the Ministry of Economy and Finance.

It marked a sharp increase from this year’s policy financing of around 3.6 trillion won.

A 1.1 trillion-won fund for a chip industry ecosystem will be created to assist fabless and chip material companies.

The government also called f
or a 15 percent tax deduction for facility investment in semiconductors, rechargeable batteries, vaccines, displays, hydrogen and other national strategic sectors, and up to 50 percent tax deduction is available for research and development projects in those fields.

The government plans to invest 5 trillion won in nurturing talent for R and D projects of the chip segment starting 2025 through 2027, compared with its investment of around 3 trillion won from 2022-2024.

The industry ministry will invest 274.4 billion won in R and D projects for semiconductor packaging technologies starting 2025 to 2031 to enhance the competitiveness of cutting-edge products such as high bandwidth memory chips.

Source: Emirates News Agency