South Korea has said plans are in the pipeline to send more trade missions to Qatar as part of initiatives to increase bilateral trade. Korea Business Centre (Kotra) director general Jaehyun Shin told Gulf Times that South Korea exported $674mn worth of heavy equipment, passenger cars, transformers, air conditioning units, electric generators, steel pipes and tubes, cellular phones, television sets, and tyres to Qatar in 2015.
During the same period, Qatar exported $16.4bn worth of natural gas, petroleum, naphtha, aluminium ingot and scrap to South Korea, Jaehyun said.
But South Korean ambassador Heung Kyeong Park said the impact of low oil prices had reduced the amount of trade between the two countries. The embassy, he said, will send more trade delegations to Qatar to improve trade volume.
“We are working on initiatives to increase trade volume this year. We will also invite many South Korean entrepreneurs to showcase their products in Qatar. Similarly, we are inviting Qatari businessmen to South Korea to do the same so that they can develop joint ventures with their Korean counterparts,” the ambassador said.
Kotra, Jaehyun said, conducts the Korean embassy’s commercial function, and has been operating since May 2012 to promote trade and investment between the two countries. It is also responsible for the embassy’s activities in terms of supporting South Korean and Qatari small-medium sized companies for bilateral business opportunities, he noted.
Jaehyun said Kotra arranged more than 400 business meetings with 177 Qatari companies for five trade delegations comprising 44 South Korean companies that visited Qatar in 2015.
Kotra also invited 27 Qatari companies, and supported them during 16 exhibitions, or business meetings, held in South Korea last year, he said.
“We organised a Korean Pavilion at ‘Project Qatar 2015’ and prepared 61 market research papers for South Korean companies potentially aiming to enter the Qatari market. Kotra also discovered 82 trade leads from Qatar and provided them to Korean companies,” he stressed.
Jaehyun added: “Since its inception in Doha, Kotra has made every effort to broaden bilateral economic ties between South Korea and Qatar through business-related information study such as market, regulation, certification, and license, among others. Aside from taking part in exhibitions held in Qatar, we also search for potential business partners and introduce them to both sides, and organise business meetings for South Korean companies visiting Qatar and vice versa.”