Lee Won-wook Announces Three-Pronged Financial Support for Steel Industry

Financial Services Commission Chairman Lee Won-wook announced three types of financial support measures – loans, bond purchases, and investments – to alleviate the burden on the steel industry, which is facing difficulties due to the recent Middle East situation. Chairman Lee explained at the '3rd Industry-Financial Sector Meeting for Industries Affected by the Middle East Situation' held that day that the steel industry's burden is being exacerbated by a combination of factors, including rising logistics costs due to the recent Middle East situation, supply chain instability, and tariff policies from the U.S. and EU.

First, the Financial Services Commission will ease liquidity challenges for steel companies through loan support. To this end, it will operate financial support programs from policy financial institutions (worth approximately 25.6 trillion won) and private financial institutions' own support (worth over 53 trillion won). Furthermore, it will ease the burden of bond issuance for steel companies. Starting this month, the repayment ratio and subordinated investment ratio will be lowered for the refinancing of P-CBO (Asset-Backed Securities backed by Credit Guarantee Fund) for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and mid-sized companies affected by the Middle East situation. From June, the Credit Guarantee Fund will directly issue P-CBO to ease companies' issuance costs.

Additionally, through the 6th Corporate Restructuring Fund, slated to be established this month with a total scale of 1 trillion won, investments will be made in business restructuring and financial structure improvement for six key industries, including the steel industry. Chairman Lee added that the impact of these measures could spread to downstream industries such as machinery and electronics.