South Korea's finance minister called on parliament Monday to pass controversial reform bills in order to speed up the country's structural reform and bolster overall competitiveness.

"Every reform is completed by the law. The government cannot carry out sweeping reform without a parliamentary passage," Finance Minister Yoo Il-ho said in a press conference with four other ministers from the labor, education and trade ministries and the Financial Services Commission.

"The government has tried to convince the National Assembly to legalize the reform bills, but now time is not on our side."

A number of reform bills that rebuild the labor and employment market and carry out corporate restructuring have been held up in parliament due to months of political standoffs.

"The success of structural reforms depends on how the parliament passes such bills," he said. "The government will do its best to complete the reform project, but we need the opportunity to take a fair evaluation of its results."

Yoo, who also doubles as deputy prime minister of economic affairs, stressed that the all-out reform in the labor, education and financial sectors is South Korea's most urgent task this year in the face of a low oil price trend and a Chinese slowdown.

"We are suffering from weakening industrial competitiveness and a stagnating population, and our economy has been losing potential," said Yoo, also a two-time lawmaker for the ruling Saenuri Party, citing that the country's January exports jumped to a six-year high of 18.5 percent on-year.

"I will soon come up with effective measures to prop up domestic demand and exports."

The finance ministry has vowed to try to prop up private consumption in the first quarter of 2016, which has showed a tepid sign of recovery since the third quarter of last year on the back of government-led tax cut programs and nationwide discount events.

It will spend 125 trillion won (US$104.3 billion) in the January-March period, up 8 trillion won from the same period last year out of its 330.6 trillion won budget for 2016.

Asia's fourth-largest economy grew 2.6 percent in 2015, slowing from 3.3 percent growth in the previous year, according to the latest central bank data. Its exports actually dragged down the economy by 1.2 percentage points last year, while domestic demand added 3.7 percentage points to growth. (Yonhap)