MILAN — President Park Geun-hye on Wednesday urged businessmen and authorities from South Korea and Italy to expand bilateral cooperation to achieve her vision of a creative economy, which she believes could become a new growth engine and create more jobs in the future.
At a forum in Milan cohosted by businessmen from the two nations, Park called Italy one of the most optimal partners for realizing her economic vision and engaging in business collaborations to target new markets abroad.
The creative economy is Park’s core economic strategy, one that she has been pushing to implement in Asia’s fourth-largest economy as part of efforts to stimulate its sluggish economy. The vision is aimed at nurturing creative ideas from across society, and assimilating them with ICT, science and technology and other industries to eventually create new technology and jobs.
Park arrived in the Italian industrial city on Tuesday evening to attend the 10th Asia-Europe Meeting summit. After the economic forum, she attended a meeting with Korean residents in Italy and thanked them for their dedication to promoting their mother country in the European country.
Italy is hosting the biennial ASEM meeting as the country currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union. At the ASEM summit, leaders are expected to open dialogues to enhance “connectivity” between Asia and Europe on economic cooperation and global matters.
On the sidelines of the Summit, Park plans to hold three separate meetings with French President Francois Hollande, Chinese President Li Keqiang and Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt.
After the ASEM, Park will visit Rome to hold a summit with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano and Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to discuss ways to seek strategic partnerships in a wide range of fields including the economy, culture, and science and technology.
Park’s government believes that expanding cooperation with Italy could benefit small and medium-sized companies in Korea. SMEs in Italy comprise 99 percent of the country’s industrial forces. Most have less than 250 employees but together they produce 65 percent of the country’s exports and account for 80 percent of the country’s jobs.
The Korean government is reportedly considering entering new markets in Africa and the Middle East jointly with Italy by combining Korea’s information technology with Italy’s global fashion brands.
During the envisioned summit, leaders of South Korea and Italy on Friday are expected to sign a number of MOUs to expand economic cooperation.
The two nations are among the top 10 exporters in the world. Korea is the eighth-largest trading nation, followed by Italy. But the trade volume between the two countries is relatively low, standing at $6.5 billion as of August this year. Among Korea’s export destinations, Italy ranks 29th.
By Cho Chung-un, Korea Herald correspondent
(christory@heraldcorp.com)
