Busan City Ranks 10th Among 16 Cities and Provinces Nationwide in High-Tech Item Exports

Busan Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Hwang Du-yeol] Last year, Busan's export share of high-tech items, which account for one-third of the country's total export value, ranked 10th among the 16 cities and provinces nationwide.

On the 17th, the Busan Chamber of Commerce and Industry released a report titled "Export Trends and Challenges of High-Tech Items in the Busan Region," which compared and analyzed the export performance of nine high-tech item groups selected by the OECD.

According to the report, Busan's export performance of high-tech items in 2021 was about 1 billion dollars, doubling from 500 million dollars in 2011, ten years earlier, showing a high average annual growth rate of around 7%.

This contrasts with Busan's overall export performance, which increased by only 0.2% annually during the same period, and the export performance of the region's main items such as steel, automobile parts, and shipbuilding equipment, which actually decreased by 1.2% annually.

By item, Busan had a relatively high export share in weapons and aerospace products.

Weapons accounted for 26.3% of the region's total high-tech item export performance, and aerospace items, including aircraft engines and parts and other navigation devices, accounted for 20.4%.

These two items accounted for a high proportion of 46.7% of the total. The export performance of these two items also recorded nearly fourfold high growth over the past 10 years.

Next were scientific instruments at 19.1%, electronic communication devices at 18.7%, chemical products at 6.2%, and electrical equipment at 5.9%.

Despite this growth, Busan's export performance of high-tech items remained 10th among the 16 cities and provinces nationwide, confirming that its industrial competitiveness is quite weak.

Last year, the export share of high-tech items accounted for 6.8% of Busan's total exports but only 0.5% based on domestic exports.

Incheon, competing with Busan, recorded an export performance of high-tech items of 15.6 billion dollars last year, about 16 times higher than Busan's 1 billion dollars, and showed nearly double the growth rate of Busan's 7.1% with an average annual increase of 13.5% over the past 10 years.

By region, Gyeonggi Province at 34.4% and Chungnam at 30.4% had the highest export shares of high-tech items nationwide, with exports from these two regions accounting for 64.8% of the total.

Next were Gyeongbuk at 8.7%, Incheon at 7.7%, Chungbuk at 5.9%, and Seoul at 5.6%, with the metropolitan area and Chungcheong region accounting for 85% of the share.

The metropolitan area and Chungcheong region lead domestic high-tech item exports because companies related to electronic communication devices, including high value-added semiconductors that account for 76.8% of the total, are concentrated there.

Looking at specialized industries by region, Gyeonggi Province ranked first and second in domestic export shares in seven items excluding aerospace and weapons.

Incheon, based on airport infrastructure, held the second place in aerospace, third in pharmaceuticals, and third in electronic communication devices.

Chungnam ranked first domestically in electronic communication devices and scientific instruments, while Gyeongnam recorded first place with 44% in aerospace and 47.5% in non-electronic devices.

Ulsan, based on its petrochemical complex, ranked third domestically in chemical product export share, following Gyeonggi and Jeonbuk.

The Busan Chamber of Commerce and Industry's Corporate Trend Analysis Center stated, "The survey confirmed with figures that the metropolitan area has sufficient high-tech industrial infrastructure concentrated to the extent that no further investment is needed," adding, "Fostering the high-tech industry can be a new opportunity for the high value-added transformation of the non-metropolitan economy, so Busan urgently needs to prepare strategic response measures for electronic communication devices and relatively weak high-tech items."