"We mobilized every means to drive corporations and regional investment in North Gyeongsang in 2025. We also sowed many seeds for megaton-level results next year. Please watch for the harvest ahead."
North Gyeongsang Gov. Lee Cheol-woo on the 18th stated accordingly about the province's investment attraction results. Throughout the year, the province designed economic policy to guarantee the freedom and creativity of corporations, focusing on securing an investment model in which local government and corporations work together. It especially concentrated on finding answers in the field to remove obstacles that hinder economic development.
With this aim, the province launched the corporate regulation on-site support group, the first among metropolitan local governments to combine regulatory innovation and corporate support into one. The on-site support group is a support system that identifies and resolves regulations that impede corporate management activities. The framework was designed with the regional chamber of commerce and operations have begun.
Five expert commissioners with both field and administrative experience visited nearly 100 corporate sites to listen to corporations' difficulties. At on-site roundtables, the local government itself proposed upfront investment in infrastructure for corporate operations, such as building a brine wastewater treatment facility to support the secondary battery materials industry.
Economic Vice Gov. Yang Geum-hee said, "One person's voice can be a civil complaint, but if similar cases repeat and accumulate to form a common denominator, it becomes a regulation and a policy agenda," adding that the on-site support group's activities would achieve regulatory easing that corporations can feel.
The province also actively used regional revitalization investment funds to shift the paradigm of regional infrastructure building—previously divided into fiscal projects and private investment projects—into a public-private collaboration.
As the first project of the regional revitalization investment fund, construction began on the Gumi worker dormitory. The Gyeongju Gangdong hydrogen fuel cell power generation project, the nation's fourth regional revitalization investment fund, also broke ground and is gaining speed, with progress reaching 30%.
The province plans to create an "economic policy model that residents can feel," with two pillars of investment partnerships and knowledge partnerships. In particular, it will prepare, together with financial-sector expert institutions, the procedures needed for development projects, including feasibility analysis for large infrastructure investment planning, arranging investors, and engaging financial institutions.