As gov’t bulks up, land and equipment assets grow 5%

Total assets owned by the government grew more than 5 percent on-year in 2011 due to land, buildings and equipment purchases, the Ministry of Strategy and Finance said yesterday.

It said the government held about 8,319 trillion won ($7.75 trillion) worth of assets at the end of 2011, up 5.6 percent, or 439 trillion won, from a year earlier. This is 2.3 times larger than in 2001, when the government held about 3,576 trillion won.

The asset increase is due to purchases of land and tangible fixed assets such as buildings and machinery equipment. The two types of assets accounted for 88.8 percent of the total, the ministry said.

Government land was estimated at 3,744 trillion won in 2011, up 176 trillion won from a year earlier. About 65 percent was concentrated in Seoul and its surrounding areas, the ministry said. Yonhap