Large firms plan to increase hiring this year

A majority of nation’s large corporations plan to increase hiring this year while nearly half of them also plan to expand capital investment, a survey showed Tuesday.

According to a survey, carried out by the Hyundai Research Institute of the country's 100 biggest firms in 10 industries in terms of sales, more than 70 percent of the respondents said they plan to increase employment this year, slightly falling from 78.4 percent a year earlier.

While the figure dipped, the percentage of companies that said they plan to hire 6 to 10 percent more nearly doubled to 16.2 percent, compared with 9.8 percent a year ago.

The figure for a 1-5 percent increase came in at 60.8 percent, down from 68.6 percent a year ago.

Roughly 49 percent of the polled firms said they plan to increase facility investment this year, up from 43.6 percent a year earlier.

A total of 35.1 percent of them said they will increase investment by 1-10 percent, while 5.4 percent said they plan to increase it by 10-19 percent. Some 8 percent said they plan to expand it by over 20 percent.

Some 59 percent of the polled firms said they expect the South Korean economy to start improving next year, followed by 22.3 percent for this year and 18.4 percent for 2017 and beyond.

Their biggest concern was tepid domestic demand at 22 percent, growing household debt at 16.7 percent and a weak yen at 16 percent, according to the poll.

The poll was conducted as the government and private-sector institutions slash their growth outlook for Asia's fourth-largest economy.

In December, the finance ministry lowered its growth estimate for this year to 3.8 percent from 4 percent. The central bank is scheduled to release its latest economic outlook next week.