The nation's top 200 enterprises plan to raise their facility investments this year to 50.2 trillion won ($51.2 billion), up 16.1 percent from a year earlier. Based on its survey of 200 leading companies in 24 core business sectors, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy said that their capital spending for facilities will jump 16.1 percent from 43.2 trillion won last year. Korean enterprises are moving to invest more, as they expect the national economy to recover faster than expected this year, a ministry spokesman said. In particular, the auto, steel, petrochemical, and information technology (IT) sectors are likely to absorb much of the planned corporate capital spending. Facility investment in the manufacturing sector is expected to rise 12.7 percent on good sales in automobiles, petrochemicals and IT sectors. That in non-manufacturing sector is also expected to jump 26.3 percent on good performances in energy and distribution fields. Manufacturing investments are projected to reach about 36 trillion won and non-manufacturing investments are to be around 14 trillion won this year. The government poll also suggested that the companies frontload facility investment in the first half. Top 30 business groups will account for 86.4 percent, or 43.3 trillion won, of the total facility investment for 2006. And top five conglomerates will account for 50.4 percent of the total, the spokesman said. Facility investment in home appliances, shoes and textiles that mainly belong to small and medium-sized companies, evidently, is not expected to rise this year, rather to suffer decreased investment. Particularly, it is a rising demand from both local and overseas markets that make companies earmark more money for the auto, electronics, petrochemical and IT fields. A number of Korean enterprises also earmarked much of their capital spending for research and development, which will lay the groundwork for future growth.