South Korea has decided to increase the size of Korea’s soft loan to 3.0 billion US dollars from 700 million dollars, the Korean ambassador in Dhaka Lee Jung Keun said on Wednesday.
“This amount will be implemented during the next five years, between 2022 and 2026,” the envoy told the DCAB Talk, organised by the Diplomatic Correspondents’ Association of Bangladesh.
So far, Korea has provided $1.34 billion of EDCF concessional loans to Bangladesh for 27 projects.
“With this increase, Korea can now assist bigger development projects in Bangladesh. I believe that this will help Bangladesh for the smooth graduation of LDC in 2026” the envy added.
Regarding Foreign Direct Invest (FDI), he said there has been continuous inflow of Korean investment to Bangladesh.
“Korea remains one of the major foreign investors in Bangladesh. According to the BB, the accumulated stock of Korean FDI increased to $1.4 billion in 2021/22 from $1.1 billion in 2019/20”.
He said, Korea is the fifth major foreign investor for Bangladesh and in case of the gross FDI flow in the first quarter of this year, Korea is the first with $150 million.
After being stagnant for more than 10 years, the Bangladesh-Korea bilateral trade reached a record high last year to over $2.0 billion, the ambassador said.
The previous highest record was set in 2011 when it reached to $1.8 billion.
Korea’s export to Bangladesh recorded $1.63 billion in 2021, registering 58 per cent growth from the previous year while Bangladesh’s export to Korea reached $552 million, marking a 40 per cent year-to-year increase.
‘It is encouraging that our bilateral trade is expanding in spite of the global economic crisis. We have to make efforts to maintain this upward trend of bilateral trade.’
Mr Lee said, this year, between January and August, more than 3,000 Bangladeshi expatriate workers went to Korea which is a record high number.
“By the end of this year, we expect the number will reach almost 4,000,” he said adding that this is another area where meaningful progress was made.
“Before the pandemic, annually less than 2,000 Bangladesh expatriate workers have been sent to Korea before the pandemic. After the suspension of admitting new expatriate workers for almost two years, we resumed it in December last year. There are more than 10,000 Bangladesh expatriate workers working in Korea now”.
He informed that this year’s quota increased to 3,441 from 1,941.
Bangladeshi workers in Korea remitted more than $209 million in the 2020/21 fiscal year to home which made Korea the 12th major remittance sending country.
Even though Korea’s ODA to Bangladesh is relatively smaller than those of Japan, US and Europe, Bangladesh is the third major recipient of Korea’s ODA, he said expecting that Bangladesh will be the second largest recipient this year.
The envoy said during his tenure in Dhaka he sticks to three major objectives which are; to diversify RMG centered cooperation; to take the relations into a new height; and to focus on young generation.
