Samsung Group, South Korea’s top family-owned conglomerate, said Wednesday that it plans to spend 170 billion won ($153 million) in training software engineers and nurturing the related industry over the next five years.

The group also said it plans to hire over 2,000 software engineers every year through 2017, up almost 30 percent from an average seen in the past few years.

Samsung will also offer software-related training courses for 50,000 students over the next five years.

“The plans will help grow the local software industry, and is in line with the government’s push for a creative economy,” said an official at the group.

Early this year, as part of efforts to strengthen its software clout, Samsung announced a new policy designed to hire liberal arts majors and train them as software engineers.

Under its plans, around 2,500 university students with software engineering backgrounds will be offered a training course on software engineering, according to Samsung. They will be given scholarships as well, it added.

Also, a training course on software engineering will be offered to some 5,000 university students with liberal arts majors, which could help converge related content and create synergy, the group said.

Last week, Samsung said it plans to inject 1.5 trillion won by 2022 to support research and development in basic science, materials engineering, and information and communication technology.

The project apparently is in line with President Park Geun-hye’s “creative economy” vision that calls for using information technology as a main tool for economic growth. (Yonhap News)