For chips, exports in slowdown

The growth of semiconductor exports slowed down during the first four months of this year, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy said yesterday. The decline in growth was more pronounced in memory chip exports, one of Korea’s core export items. The ministry said that the exports of semiconductor products from January to April this year grew 7 percent over last year to $5.4 billion. But most of the growth came in January, which saw a 40 percent increase in exports over the same month last year. Semiconductor exports have been on the decline since then, and April saw a 1 percent drop. Memory chips, which Korean companies specialize in, such as dynamic random access memory, or DRAM chips, saw a 13 percent decrease in exports from January to April, to $2.6 billion from the identical period last year. Among export markets, the United States saw the steepest decline in DRAM imports from Korea of 41 percent. “The placing by the United States of 57 percent in countervailing tariffs on DRAM chips from Korea contributed to the decline of semiconductor exports,” an official with the commerce industry said. The official added that the U.S-led war against Iraq and the severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, also shared in the decline. by Kim Jong-yoon