South Korean postal service plans to increase stock investment next year

Korea Post, South Korea’s postal service agency, said Friday it plans to raise its purchase of stocks by as much as threefold next year as it moves to have the law on the agency’s investment ceiling on stocks revised.

If revised, Korea Post, considered the country’s second-largest institutional investor after the National Pension Corp., will increase its stock investment to as much as 6 trillion won (USD 6.5 billion) in 2008 from the current investment of about 1.8 trillion won, the agency said.

Korea Post, which manages about 60 trillion won in postal bank deposits and insurance, is banned from investing more than 5 percent of its bank assets and 20 percent of its insurance assets in stocks.

South Korea’s main stock market index has soared more than 40 percent so far this year, and briefly passed the 2,000-point milestone last week.