The Korea Finance Corp. plans to increase its financial support to the nation’s small and medium companies in 2013, the state-run finance promoter said on Monday in a New Year’s press conference.

The state-run agency plans to assign about 7.6 trillion won, or about two-thirds of the company’s 12.2 trillion won capital for this year, to support small and medium enterprises.

“We will be spending 62 percent of our total budget to support small and medium-sized companies,” said KoFC president and chief executive Chin Young-wook.

In the conference, the KoFC also announced that it would assign $10 billion in financial support for overseas resource development, power plant construction and engineering projects until 2015.

The KoFC also seeks to establish a new overseas business unit to handle the foreign credit financing sector, which had been previously covered in the international financial unit.

Apart from the conference, a KoFC official also confirmed on the same day that the KoFC has been discussing mutual collaboration with Middle Eastern sovereign wealth fund investment agencies to initiate an investment fund project worth about 300 billion won, or about $280 million.

The state-run company signed a memorandum of understanding with Gulf Investment Corp., an investment firm financed by six Middle Eastern countries including Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar.

By Chung Joo-won (joowonc@heraldcorp.com)