Choe Sang-mok and Lee Chang-yong Meet to Discuss Issues in Korea's Economic Structure

Choi Sang-mok, Deputy Prime Minister for Economy and Minister of Strategy and Finance, met with Lee Chang-yong, Governor of the Bank of Korea, on the 6th to discuss solutions for structural problems in the Korean economy.

Deputy Prime Minister Choi and Governor Lee held an expanded macroeconomic policy consultation meeting at the Bank of Korea on the same day under the theme of 'Policy Directions for Solving Structural Problems in Our Economy and Realizing a Dynamic Economy.'

The Ministry of Strategy and Finance and the Bank of Korea established a macroeconomic policy consultation meeting involving vice minister-level officials in 2011, using it as a communication platform for in-depth discussions on various macroeconomic topics.

This time, to seek solutions to the structural problems facing our economy, the consultation meeting was elevated to the institution head level, marking the first official visit by the Deputy Prime Minister to the Bank of Korea since 2018.

At the meeting, Deputy Prime Minister Choi diagnosed that excessive regulation and the weakening of the corporate growth ladder have significantly reduced the dynamism across industries and companies, while the population crisis, such as the decline in the working-age population, has become a reality, causing the potential growth rate to continuously decline.

He emphasized the urgent need to explore policy tasks to restore the dynamism of our economy, including strengthening the innovation ecosystem, ensuring fair opportunities, enhancing social mobility, and overcoming demographic challenges such as low birth rates, and to implement an economic and social system that simultaneously achieves growth, distribution, and economic sustainability.

Governor Lee pointed out major structural problems such as the decrease in labor supply due to low birth rates and aging, the lack of global leading companies creating high added value, changes in the trade environment including protectionism, the disappearance of China-specific demand, concentration in the metropolitan area, and population outflow from local regions.

He further stressed the need to raise the potential growth rate by improving labor utilization of idle labor, maintaining the competitiveness of ICT manufacturing, promoting convergence between industries, proactively responding to external risks such as supply chain diversification, and alleviating metropolitan concentration through the development of key cities.

The meeting lasted nearly two hours, and Deputy Prime Minister Choi also took a commemorative photo in front of the employee rest bench presented by the Ministry of Strategy and Finance to the Bank of Korea. The Bank of Korea plans to actively promote Governor Lee's visit to the Ministry of Strategy and Finance in the second half of the year.

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