The productivity and growth rate of foreign-invested firms in Korea are about double those of domestic companies.

The Ministry of Knowledge Economy on Monday released a report on the performance of 2,301 foreign-invested firms in 2007, which had been analyzed by the Institute for Trade and Investment and Gallup Korea. According to the report, their labor productivity, or the amount of goods and services a worker produces in a given time, was worth W141.8 million (US$1=W1,329), 1.92 times that of domestic companies (W73.9 million).

The increase rate of their tangible assets -- a growth index -- stood at 10 percent, 2.04 times higher than that of domestic firms' 4.9 percent.

Foreign-invested firms accounted for 15.6 percent of exports by the Korean manufacturing industry, a sharp increase from the previous year's 11.7 percent. But they accounted for only 12.6 percent of sales and 7.3 percent of employment, compared with 13.9 percent and 8.1 percent the previous year.

They spent a total of W1.6 trillion on research and development, accounting for 7.3 percent of the domestic industry's expenses.

Their high productivity and growth are due to their larger capital investment and to their concentration on capital and technologies rather than labor, the ministry said.