President Moon Jae-in on Wednesday voiced confidence that South Korea would continue to post economic growth of 3 percent or more next year and stressed that the benefits from it must filter through to ordinary citizens.

During a meeting with top economic policymakers and experts, Moon also reaffirmed his drive for job creation in the public sector, swift deregulation to buttress "innovative" growth and fairness in market competition that has long been dominated by big conglomerates.

"I am confident that despite difficulties, (South Korea) will continue to achieve growth in the 3 percent range and an (annual per capita) income of $30,000 next year," the liberal president said during the meeting.

"But what is more important is that people have to actually feel that their lives are getting better due to such visible achievements of new economic policies," he added.

Despite the sanguine forecast for 2018, Moon voiced concerns about a series of domestic economic challenges that have continued to threaten the livelihoods of ordinary South Koreans.

"Though economic indices are improving, individual citizens are not feeling them, as a matter of fact," he said, pointing to the high youth unemployment rate, hefty household debt and a series of market disadvantages weighing down on small enterprises.

Moon described his job creation policy as one that citizens can directly benefit from. He has been pushing to create 174,000 new public service jobs by 2022 as part of his signature "income-led growth" strategy.

"Based on the creation of public service jobs, we have to create a boom for quality-job creation in the private sector," Moon said. "I call for quickly improving various measures to support companies' job creation and hope that the private sector will actively cooperate."

The president, in addition, called for progress in nurturing high-tech sectors such as autonomous vehicles, drones and smart factories and cities, and he stressed that "innovative" growth would help revitalize the economy and contribute to job growth.

"I want to call for bold efforts in the sector of innovative growth," he said.

Moon also pointed out that such growth can be fueled by deregulation and directed top officials to immediately push for clearing onerous regulatory hurdles if possible. (Yonhap)