Spending on research and development (R&D) by major Korean companies gained nearly 8 percent year on year in 2018, with the top eight players contributing over 60 percent of the total, a state think tank said Monday.

R&D expenditures by the country’s top 1,000 companies in terms of sales came to 49.7 trillion won ($42.5 billion) last year, up 7.9 percent from the previous year, according to the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology.

The combined operating profit of the 1,000 firms reached 117.16 trillion won, up 0.1 percent from a year earlier.

The institute said R&D spending against sales by the top 1,000 businesses has steadily risen over the past decade, hitting 3.76 percent last year after surpassing 3 percent for the first time in 2013.

R&D expenditures by companies with a workforce of 1,000 or more came to 42.8 trillion won, accounting for 86.3 percent of the total. The corresponding figure for companies with a workforce of less than 100 amounted to 614 billion won.

R&D spending by manufacturing companies, which account for 77.2 percent of the 1,000 companies, stood at 44.8 trillion won, or 90.2 percent of the total.

Samsung Electronics and eight other leading companies spent more than 1 trillion on R&D and their combined R&D expenditures came to 30 trillion won, accounting for 60.4 percent of the total.

Samsung was by far the largest R&D spender, followed by SK Hynix, LG Electronics, Hyundai Motor, Samsung Display, Kia Motors, LG Display and LG Chem.

The country’s top 100 R&D spenders invested 42 trillion won in total, accounting for 85.0 percent.

By Pulse

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