인도와 한국은 2030년까지 500억 달러의 양국간 무역 목표를 달성하기 위해 협력해야 한다 India, Korea need to work together to achieve $50 billion bilateral trade target by 2030

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NEW DELHI: while suggesting measures to achieve the jointly set target of taking the foreign trade between India and South Korea to $50 billion by the year 2030 from the current $21.5 billion, the South Korean Ambassador has said that both the countries need to work together to achieve the target.

Chang Jae-bok said that the friendlier working conditions, and widening the scope of the free trade agreement CEPA between the two countries would help achieve the target.

“Last year, because of the Covid (pandemic), the (bilateral) trade volume was lower, but this year we have indications that it will back to the previous level. We need to make more efforts from both sides, not only from Korea but also from India,” the South Korean Ambassador told Asian Community News (ACN) Network on Friday.

The ambassador was replying to the question, “Would it be possible for India and South Korea to achieve the target of taking the bilateral trade to $50 billion by the year 2030 as was jointly announced by Indian PM Narendra Modi and Korean President Moon Jae-in in 2018.”

He was interacting with ACN after inaugurating the Korea Fair in India 2021 (KFI) on October 1 at Select City Walk in New Delhi. The 10-day long event, which is the first ground-level activity by KOTRA after the Covid-19 pandemic hit the world, including in India, inducing the nation-wide lockdown in the early 2020 and bringing the economic activities to an almost standstill situation.

KOTRA, the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency, is the foreign trade promotion arm of the Korean Embassy is organizing this event.

“We are in the phase of the negotiations of revising the CEPA (Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) ); after that, we will analyze the current situation, and we are going to find more fields of cooperation,” said the ambassador.

India and South Korea had signed the CEPA in 2010, but because of the limited scope of this FTA, the bilateral between the two countries could not increase substantially as compared to other countries. As Korea wants to add more sectors to the CEPA, a series of negotiations to widen its scope has not yielded the desired results.

When asked what India should do to enhance the bilateral economic cooperation and make more Korean companies come to India, Chang Jae-bok said that India should provide friendlier conditions to the Korean business.

Though ‘Invest India’ was very much working to bring Korean investment to India. Still, some of the problems, such as bureaucratic and customs issues at the lower level, were areas of concern.

Related article: Want FDI? Be More Competitive, Tame Bureaucracy, Improve Ease of Doing Business, Improve CEPA: Korea tells India