Hyundai Motor Group has announced plans to invest nearly 81 trillion won ($73 billion) over the next four years. This is good news for the Korean economy, which desperately needs corporate investment and consumer spending to overcome the current difficulties.

Hyundai said it will spend an average of 20.2 trillion won through 2018 to expand its production facilities and augment research and development programs. This annual investment budget would be far larger than the previous all-time high of 14.9 trillion won the automobile group spent in 2014.

Hyundai chairman Chung Mong-koo indicated investment expansion in his New Year’s address, in which he said that in 2015, the company should make a leap forward by expanding investment and raising its global competitiveness. Yet, the scale of the massive investment plan is much larger than expected.

What’s more welcoming is that the investment plan aims to enhance the technological edge of the world’s fifth-largest automaker. Altogether, 31.6 trillion won or 39 percent of the money will be spent on research and development programs.

This is well directed because, despite its remarkable growth in the global auto markets in recent years, Hyundai Motor and its affiliate Kia Motors lag behind their rivals in technologies for eco-friendly, fuel-efficient cars.

That even a nontraditional rival such as Google is moving to produce unmanned vehicles and smart cars shows that no automaker can survive the intensifying global competition without securing technological supremacy.

While there is no doubt that a company like Hyundai should set its sights on the global market, it at the same time raises worries that global expansion efforts ― like relocation overseas of production facilities ― entails some sacrifice from the local economy.

It is against this backdrop that the latest Hyundai investment plan should be hailed, because 61.2 trillion won, or 76 percent of the total spending plan, will be utilized within the country.

The Korean economy, despite the government’s pump-priming measures like expansion of fiscal spending, deregulation of the real estate sector and low interest rates, is struggling with low growth, weak consumer spending and sluggish corporate investment. Household debts and unemployment are adding to these woes.

In order to overcome these difficulties, corporate investment based on confidence in the future economy and venturous spirit is essential, and Hyundai’s decision sets an example in this regard.

Besides Hyundai, we hear that Samsung Electronics will announce a record-high 50 trillion won investment plan for 2015. We hope that more companies will follow suit, which will surely enhance confidence among all the economic players and create a virtuous economic cycle.

The minimum job left for the government to foster corporate investment will be maintaining policy consistency, implementing active deregulation and fulfilling its promise to restructure the public, labor, education and financial sectors.