SME Times News Bureau | 10 Jul, 2018
India
and South Korea on Tuesday
agreed to urther strengthen
their Comprehensive Economic Partnership (CEPA) following
delegation-level talks headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and
South Korean President Moon Jae-in in
New Delhi.
"We
have taken an important step in the form of an Early Harvest Package
to further upgrade our Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement,"
Prime Minister Modi
said in a joint address to the media along with Moon after the
meeting.
"Keeping in view the future of our
relationship and the rapid technology changes across the world, we
have decided to set up an Innovation Cooperation Centre and form a
Future Strategy Group," he said.
Modi
lauded Korean companies for not only investing in India but also
creating employment opportunities under the Make in India
initiative.
"Korean companies have become household
names in India for their commitment to quality of their products,"
he said.
Following Tuesday's talks, the two sides also
released a Vision Document to further strengthen their Special
Strategic Partnership.
"Our focus is to further
strengthen our Special Strategic Partnership," the Prime
Minister said. "Economic and commercial ties is an important
pillar of this."
The India-South Korea relationship
was elevated to that of a Special Strategic Partnership during Modi's
visit to that country in 2015.
The Prime Minister also
said that India's Act East Policy that seeks to strengthen ties with
Southeast Asia has natural commonalities with President Moon's New
Southern Policy.
The India-South Korea was operationalised
in 2010 as a result of then President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam's visit to
that East Asian nation four years earlier.
Following this,
trade and economic relations between the two sides started to gather
momentum and bilateral trade in 2011 crossed $20.5 billion
registering a 70 per cent growth over a two-year period.
However,
bilateral trade since declined to $18.13 billion in 2014-15, $16.56
billion in 2015-16, USD 16.82 billion in 2016-17, which finally
recovered and posted a positive growth of 30 percent in the first
seven months of 2017.