Incheon City Prepares 4 Strategies for 'Leap to Top 10 Global Cities' Including Bio and Semiconductor Industry Development

Incheon City is implementing various policies to secure future growth engines by strengthening the development of future advanced industries such as bio and semiconductors, securing industrial sites for balanced development between the old downtown and the Free Economic Zone.

On the 20th, at the 2024 Future Industry Bureau major work report chaired by Mayor Yoo Jeong-bok, the city announced that it presented four strategies and sixteen policies aimed at "leaping to become one of the world's top 10 cities with Incheon's future industrial map."

First, the city plans to create a competitive Incheon through the Future Industrial Map project.

Incheon intends to build industrial belts tailored to regional characteristics to foster its abundant industrial resources, including semiconductors, bio, future cars, and robots, with a particular focus on the energy industry where it has a comparative advantage. The planned industrial belts include the Bio-Semiconductor-SoBuJang (materials, parts, and equipment) Belt, Robot-Mobility-Advanced Medical Belt, Eco-friendly-Future Energy Belt, and ICT Convergence Belt. Through this, the city aims to attract global companies and achieve linked and symbiotic development between traditional manufacturing and advanced industries, while promoting balanced development between the Free Economic Zone and the old downtown.

In particular, Incheon, which holds the world's number one bio-similar (biopharmaceutical generic drugs) production capacity for a single city and possesses national advanced strategic industrial technologies in the bio sector, plans to attract a national advanced strategic bio industry specialized complex in the first half of next year. The city envisions creating a bio-triangle specialized complex connecting the Songdo bio cluster with Namdong and Yeongjong areas.

Incheon Mayor Yoo Jeong-bok is receiving the 2024 Future Industry Bureau's major work report on the 20th.
[Photo by Incheon City]

Additionally, to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) struggling due to complex economic crises such as high interest rates, the city will increase management stabilization funds from 1.19 trillion won this year to 1.3 trillion won next year. At the same time, it will establish and operate an SME Technology Management Support Center that can comprehensively control rapidly changing technologies, trends, and regulations and provide one-stop support to companies.

Alongside this, the city plans to support the scale-up leap of startup companies through the creation of a startup ecosystem and activation of investment.

To strengthen support for ventures, startups, and youth entrepreneurship leading future economic growth, Incheon will expand the operation of the Big Wave Fund of Funds (a fund investing in other funds), startup funds, and growth funds to create a more robust and dynamic investment circulation system. It will also assist startups' scale-up leaps through various projects and policy discoveries, including technology-based startup support by growth stage, youth overseas expansion bases, and global youth CEO development.

Incheon City also plans to take the lead in creating a low-carbon city by accelerating the transition to renewable energy. The energy industry is a field expected to gain attention in the future due to international trend changes such as carbon neutrality and RE100 (an international corporate agreement project to replace 100% of corporate electricity consumption with renewable energy).

With abundant wind and hydrogen resources, Incheon plans to raise its renewable energy supply target from the original 22% to 35.7% by 2030, an increase of 13.9 percentage points. The city will accelerate the transition to a clean energy city by establishing a 6.2GW offshore wind power complex in Incheon and nearby EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone) waters, building a hydrogen industry production cluster, expanding renewable energy supply in the public sector, and creating a leading eco-friendly vehicle city.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.