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South Korean President Park Geun-hye on Thursday called for a more liberalized free trade pact with Southeast Asian nations to expand business opportunities between the two sides.
Park made the comments in a keynote speech for a CEO summit with business leaders from South Korea and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), opening the two-day summit between the two sides.
The meeting with some 570 businessmen was held at the Busan Exhibition & Convention Center, or BEXCO, in the country's southeastern city of Busan. Park will host a special summit with 10 ASEAN leaders and hold a joint press conference on Friday.
"(South Korea and the ASEAN) should expand business opportunities by liberalizing the bilateral FTA further," Park said at the CEO summit. "Unfortunately, Korean companies' utilization rate of the (South)Korea-ASEAN FTA stands merely at about half of other FTAs (that South Korea clinched)."
South Korea and the ASEAN signed the free trade agreement (FTA) in May 2006, which more than doubled trade between the two sides. The bilateral trade rose from about 61 billion U.S. dollars in 2006 to more than 130 billion dollars in 2013.
Regarding the low utilization rate, Park said the South Korea- ASEAN FTA is less liberalized and has a complicated rule of origin, expressing her hopes for the upgraded FTA through additional negotiations.
The ASEAN, including Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam, has emerged as a key trade partner of South Korea since the two sides set up a dialogue relationship in 1989.
The ASEAN is the second largest trade partner of South Korea, following China, and the third-largest investment destination of South Korean companies.
To deepen economic partnership, Park called for an expanded cooperation scope from energy and manufacturing sectors to the service industry. She said the service sector should be deregulated first to materialize the potential of the bilateral cooperation.
After meeting with the businessmen, Park held back-to-back meetings with six Asian leaders, including those from Myanmar, Laos and Indonesia. A welcoming banquet will be held later in the day.
On Wednesday, Park announced an effective conclusion of the FTA negotiations with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung after holding a bilateral summit meeting at a hotel in Busan.
The FTA negotiations, launched in August 2012, came to a conclusion in 28 months, becoming the fifth FTA deal reached under the Park Geun-hye administration.
Vietnam agreed to liberalize 92.2 percent of all goods imported from South Korea in terms of import value. South Korea's liberalization rate was 94.7 percent.
