The government is set to review and rewrite all of its business regulations from square one as a means to deregulate or remove burdensome rules to boost private investment in Korea, sources said Tuesday.

The Office for Government Policy Coordination, part of the Prime Minister’s Office, will lead all related state agencies in the so-called “zero-based” process of evaluating more than 1,800 regulations and guidelines governing business investments.

It will then draw up comprehensive measures aimed at encouraging the private business sector to invest and expand under renewed and relaxed regulations by the end of August this year.

President Park Geun-hye called on her economic-related ministers in May to make the country’s regulatory system more efficient by cutting red tape and abolishing unnecessary regulations that are hindering investment projects and affecting business confidence.

This is in line with her cornerstone policy to develop a creative economy, and such deregulatory measures are expected for Korea to gain some 12 trillion won ($10.9 billion) in investments, the Ministry of Strategy and Finance noted.

The Policy Coordination Office will abide by a provision that allows the government to either automatically terminate or extend a set of regulations that had been devised with a specific timeframe or deadline through legislative procedures.

The government is expected to increase the use of the so-called sunset provision, adopted during the former administration, to regularly check and see the validity and efficiency of business and investment regulations under the fast-changing environment.

Almost 800 regulations have been newly registered since the start of the Park administration in February. However, about 760 of them had been devised by the former administration of Lee Myung-bak.

The Policy Coordination Office has so far rewritten about 100 regulations to further ease and simplify them as of the end of last month.

By Park Hyong-ki
(hkp@heradcorp.com)