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S.Korea, India agree to strengthen economic, trade ties

Xinhua, May 18, 2015 Adjust font size:

South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held summit talks in Seoul Monday, agreeing to strengthen bilateral economic and trade relations especially in the manufacturing and infrastructure sectors.

Modi, who took office in May 2014, arrived earlier in the day in Seoul, the last leg of his three-nation tour to Asia which has already taken him to China and Mongolia.

During the summit, the two leaders agreed to begin negotiations by June 2016 about the revision of the already-signed comprehensive economic partnership agreement (CEPA).

The India-South Korea CEPA, equal to a free trade accord, was implemented in January 2010, but Seoul raised the needs for its revision as the India-Japan CEPA, which came into force in August 2011, granted more liberalization to Japanese goods than to South Korean products.

President Park welcomed the Modi-proposed "Make in India" initiative under which India aims to raise the rate of manufacturing industry to its gross domestic product (GDP) from the current 15 percent to 25 percent by 2022.

To increase bilateral manufacturing partnership, especially in the shipbuilding industry, India's state-owned natural gas company GAIL called for South Korean shipbuilders to join its bidding for nine LNG carriers worth around 1.8 billion U.S. dollars.

The two leaders agreed to form a bilateral working group, composed of director-general officials and private firms, to discuss a broad range of cooperation in the shipbuilding area, including the shipyard construction and warship building.

Park asked Modi to pay more attention to the industrial complex for South Korean companies alone, which is now being built in Rajastan in northwest India, to strengthen bilateral manufacturing cooperation.

South Korea plans to provide 10 billion U.S. dollars as a financial support for domestic companies, which will take part in India's infrastructure development projects, to help them join the projects, such as the high-speed railroad project for which some 140 billion dollars would be spent in the next five years.

Park and Modi also agreed to strengthen cooperation in the shipping and logistics sectors as well as renewable energy and smart grid. Endit