New Delhi: The President of Republic of Korea, MOON Jae-in, affirmed his commitment to raise the level of Korea-India engagement by extending his government’s new ‘Southern Policy’ of People, Prosperity and Peace (PPP) to ‘3P Plus’ in the new areas of cooperation such as shipbuilding, medical devices and food processing.
Speaking at the ‘India-Korea Business Forum’ organized by FICCI and the Korean Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI), President MOON said that the ‘Southern Policy’ was aligned with India’s ‘Act East’ policy. The synergy created by this alignment bode well for the future of Korea-India relations, he said.
Korea, said President MOON, would provide sufficient funds to infrastructure projects in India such as the Mumbai-Nagpur Freeway and work on expanding S&T cooperation, especially in the fields of aerospace and lunar exploration.
India’s Commerce and Industry Minister, Suresh Prabhu, said that the two countries were moving constructively and taking advantage of the ‘Early Harvest’ provision in CEPA. He urged the Korean business to tap the opportunities available in India in areas such as marine product processing.
Prabhu said that the Indian Government was actively pursuing the idea of setting up Special Economic Zones (SEZs) exclusively for Korean companies in order to give a fillip to the inflow of investment to India. ‘The time was ripe to upscale India-Korea business relations from ‘K Plus’ to ‘K Squared’, he added.
FICCI President, Rashesh Shah, said that the Indian industry was enthusiastically looking forward to unprecedented growth in India-Korea trade and investment relations. The visit of President MOON with a 100-member business delegation, he said, would spur pro-active engagement between the Korean and Indian companies. He expressed confidence on greater collaboration in the fields of automobiles, electricals, construction and infrastructure.
Park Yong-Maan, Chairman, KCCI, said that the future cooperation between the two countries would aim at the promotion of peace and stimulating greater investment through CEPA. Korean industry, he said, would focus on increasing business with local Indian partners and forge joint start-ups to take business relations to newer heights.
The Business Forum witnessed the exchange of MoU documents between India’s Mahindra & Mahindra Group and Auto Gen of Korea and between Bank of Baroda and KB Financial Group.
On the occasion, the Commerce Ministers of both the countries also released a FICCI Report on ‘India-Republic of Korea: A New Era of Relationship’.
