'GRDP Surpasses 100 Trillion' Incheon... Highest National Economic Growth Rate at 6.0%

2022 GRDP, 2nd Highest Among Metropolitan Cities After Seoul
Service Industry Up 8.2%, Manufacturing Up 3.4%, Construction Up 8.2%

Incheon’s Gross Regional Domestic Product (GRDP) has entered the 100 trillion won era. This is the second largest economic scale among the eight metropolitan cities and special cities, following Seoul.

According to Incheon City on the 26th, the recently announced Statistics Korea's "2022 Regional Income (Provisional)" results showed that last year Incheon’s GRDP increased by 5.8 trillion won compared to 2021, reaching 104.5 trillion won, surpassing 100 trillion won for the first time in history. GRDP is an economic indicator that evaluates all goods and services produced in a region at market value.

Incheon City regards this record as the first step toward achieving Mayor Yoo Jeong-bok’s pledge to pioneer the "100 trillion won era of Incheon’s economic scale (GRDP)" and plans to maintain an economic scale in the 100 trillion won range through continuous growth during his term.

Last year, Incheon’s real economic growth rate was 6.0%, significantly exceeding the national average growth rate of 2.6%, marking the highest quantitative growth among the 17 cities and provinces nationwide compared to the previous year. This follows a 6.4% growth rate in 2021, maintaining a high growth rate above 6% for two consecutive years. Despite the global difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Incheon’s economy was analyzed to have grown dynamically.

Incheon City Hall

Looking at the value-added scale by industry, the service sector (55.3 trillion won → 60.2 trillion won), manufacturing sector (23.7 trillion won → 25.6 trillion won), and construction sector (7.5 trillion won → 8.4 trillion won) increased, while agriculture, forestry, and fisheries (0.3 trillion won → 0.2 trillion won) and electricity, gas, steam, and air conditioning supply (2.3 trillion won → 0.1 trillion won) decreased. The real growth rates by industry compared to the previous year were 8.2% for services, 3.4% for manufacturing, and 8.2% for construction. Within the service sector, transportation and storage (29.3%↑), accommodation and food services (18%↑), and health and social welfare (7.6%↑) showed significant growth.

The share of value added by industry showed that the service sector accounted for the largest portion of Incheon’s industry at 63.7%, up 1.6 percentage points from the previous year. The manufacturing sector, the next largest, increased by 0.5 percentage points to 27.1%. These industry groups accounted for 90.8% of Incheon’s GRDP. This indicates that Incheon’s economic growth is greatly influenced by the growth rates of the service and manufacturing sectors.

The GRDP per capita, calculated by dividing the GRDP by the estimated population of Incheon, was 35.29 million won. Although this is below the national average of 41.95 million won, it ranks fourth among the eight metropolitan and special cities, following Ulsan, Seoul, and Sejong, and is at a high level compared to other metropolitan cities of similar scale.

Additionally, Incheon’s regional gross income based on GRDP was 110.9 trillion won last year, an increase of 6.5 trillion won compared to 2021. The per capita personal income, calculated by dividing household income excluding government and corporate income by the estimated population, was 22.41 million won, a 5.9% increase from 2021, but slightly lower than the national average of 23.39 million won.

An official from Incheon City stated, "We plan to analyze the major economic indicators related to the 2022 regional gross production, regional gross income, and expenditure recently announced, reflect them in economic policy formulation, and utilize them for research on competitiveness between cities and industries."

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