The government said on the 8th it will build an artificial intelligence (AI)-based "SME crisis alert notification system" to detect risks in advance for 250,000 small and midsize enterprises.
At a joint meeting of the Emergency Economic Headquarters and the ministers' meeting on strengthening economic and industrial competitiveness, presided over the same day by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister Koo Yun-cheol of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the government announced this plan as a measure to support small and midsize enterprises.
The government plans to continuously monitor crisis situations based on AI and analyze them in a tailored way to support corporations showing signs of crisis. The government said it will provide comprehensive diagnoses for corporations facing crises and support structural improvements for growth, consulting, loans, and research and development (R&D).
It will also prepare measures to promote business transitions by corporations in crisis into promising new business fields. The government will push to extend the stays of skilled foreign workers employed by corporations transitioning businesses, and to ease eligibility requirements for receiving local investment subsidies when new local business sites are established or expanded.
It will also prepare measures to secure new demand for the steel industry, which is in crisis due to global oversupply and the spread of protectionism. The government plans to expand the use of high-quality materials and to support linking demand-side corporations and supply-side corporations to spur domestic demand. It will also require submission of crude steel production country (country of crude steel) information for imported steel to block the indirect entry of unfairly imported products.
To strengthen competitiveness, the government will inject about 500 billion won in national funds for hydrogen-reduced ironmaking and the development of 10 specialty steel technologies, and support AI-driven process improvements and stronger safety investment support.