Politicians in Seoul are carrying out a two-day debate on the government’s mismanagement of its bailouts handed to local shipping and shipbuilding companies.
With Hanjin Shipping in court receivership – container shipping’s biggest ever bankruptcy and an accounting fraud to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars at Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME) the current administration led by president Park Geun-hye has come in for massive criticism both in parliament and by the general public at large.
At the hearing, Yim Jong-yong, the chairman of the Financial Services Commission, said manpower at the nation’s top three yards – DSME, Hyundai Heavy Industries and Samsung Heavy Industries – would be slashed by 30% by 2018. All three are restructuring now with thousands of staff already laid off this year.
The nation’s finance minister also said that big conglomerates would be allowed to go under as Seoul gets tough on poor performing chaebols – the Korean name for the giant conglomerates that dominate the local economy.
Meanwhile all the yards that tried to compete on a ‘level playing field’ for the work that these yards ‘won’ have to stand by and watch as they are bailed out … again!