The International Contractors Association of Korea (ICAK) invited Lee Duk-hoon, president of the Export-Import Bank of Korea (Korea Eximbank), for a breakfast meeting with CEOs in major overseas construction businesses at The Palace Hotel Seoul on Dec. 10 to discuss ways to strengthen the competitiveness of the overseas construction industry.
At the meeting, President Lee mentioned that this year marks the 50th year for the domestic overseas construction businesses to enter the global market and overseas construction orders surpassed US$700 billion (826.7 trillion won), becoming a buttress of Korea’s economic growth. Accordingly, it is important for overseas construction companies, which are now in trouble, to continue to grow. He promised to actively help them develop emerging markets and push into overseas infrastructure markets in order to seek new future growth engines.
In particular, he said that the bank is planning to select 15 strategic developing countries, such as Vietnam and Indonesia, and sign a framework agreement with Iranian financial institutions as well as set up a credit line of sublease funds with state-run commercial banks in a bid to find preemptive business opportunities and pre-occupy the Iranian market.
With the launch of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), Korea Eximbank will also aggressively seek Asian infrastructure projects based on its cooperation networks established with Chinese financial institutions, including The Export- Import Bank of China and the Bank of China. Moreover, it will make further efforts to meet the overseas business financing needs of domestic companies by supporting the high-value-added development business sector, which are strategically pursued by domestic companies.