NEW DELHI/SEOUL: India and South Korea said on Monday (April 20) that they would boost their economic ties by expanding cooperation in energy, critical minerals, shipbuilding, semiconductors and steel as they seek to double their trade to US$50 billion by 2030.
New Delhi and Seoul also agreed to resume and step up negotiations to give new energy to their 2010 trade agreement as India wants their trade to be more balanced and South Korea wants greater market access to the world's fastest-growing major economy.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung is in India for a three-day visit, the first South Korean presidential state visit to the country in eight years. He is accompanied by around 200 South Korean business people.
"We decided to upgrade the framework of economic cooperation between the two countries to create a new engine for shared growth," Lee told reporters after talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The two countries created a ministerial-level economic cooperation committee for the first time, Lee said, adding that they would strengthen cooperation in areas such as nuclear power plants, clean energy as well as trade and investment.
With the Iran war squeezing global energy supplies, India and South Korea would also continue to cooperate to ensure the stable supply of energy resources and key raw materials such as naphtha, Lee added.
Modi said Lee's visit was extremely significant and that the two countries had taken important decisions to boost two-way trade to $50 billion by 2030 from around $27 billion at present.
"Today, we are laying the foundation for the success story of the next decade," Modi said, as he recalled strong civilisational ties between the two countries that go back several centuries.
Indian Trade Minister Piyush Goyal said he held talks with his South Korean counterpart, Yeo Han-koo, and discussed ways to resume and revamp the trade pact and explored opportunities to deepen cooperation in the areas of industry, green energy and digital trade.
"We have agreed to work on a fast track," Goyal later told a joint business forum, which would include easing non-tariff barriers, rules of origin and expanding market access. Lee told the forum that India's AI capabilities and South Korea's advanced manufacturing can create huge synergies while cooperation in shipbuilding would open a new chapter of industrial ties.
The forum was attended by executives of leading South Korean companies, such as Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Motor and LG Group.
Separately, South Korea's POSCO Holdings said in a regulatory filing on Monday that its steelmaking unit plans to build a joint venture integrated steel plant with India's JSW in Odisha state. POSCO's investment until end-2031 is expected to be about $1.09 billion, the filing said.
The joint venture deal to set up a 6-million-ton-per-annum steel plant in Odisha was announced last week.
In a policy seminar at South Korea's parliament last week, Maeng Hyun-chul, a research fellow at Seoul National University's Asia Center, noted India's longstanding complaint of a widening trade deficit with South Korea and said that political ties had not kept pace with commercial ties.
South Korea had a $12.8 billion trade surplus last year, with exports worth $19.2 billion and imports of $6.4 billion, according to Korea International Trade Association data.
Lee will be visiting Vietnam after India. - Reuters
