South Korea's loss-making public institutions posted a combined deficit of nearly 10 trillion won ($9.3 billion) over the past five years, due mainly to unprofitable overseas energy-development projects, a parliamentary report showed Saturday.
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(Yonhap) |
According to the report by the National Assembly Budget Office, 13 firms, including the Korea National Oil Corp, the Korea Coal Corp., and the Korea International Broadcasting Foundation, were in the red between 2012 and 2016.
Their combined losses reached 9.7 trillion won during the cited period.
The KNOC logged a deficit of 8.8 trillion won, accounting for 92.1 percent of the total, while the KCC suffered losses of 395.2 billion won, or 4.1 percent.
Such public energy-development firms have been subject to government-led restructuring programs as their previous investments into overseas resource projects were hit hard by years of low oil prices.