Park pledges support for small exporters
President Park Geun-hye speaks during a meeting at Cheong Wa Dae, Wednesday, to discuss the promotion of exports. Korea Times
By Kim Tae-gyu
voc200@ktimes.co.kr
President Park Geun-hye presided over a meeting aimed at promoting exports at Cheong Wa Dae, Wednesday. This was the first time in 34 years that an exports promotional meeting has been revived at the presidential office.
Park pledged additional financial support to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) at the meeting with entrepreneurs, who mostly operate such businesses, and the heads of business associations.
“Due to the slumping world economy and weak Japanese yen, the trade environment has worsened causing concerns that our export competitiveness has fallen,” Park said.
“In particular, SMEs are expected to suffer bigger problems. We have to provide active support for them such as insurance covering foreign exchange losses and export financing.”
Park said the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth was better than expected this year but added was not sufficient as it remained below the country’s potential growth rate.
Asia’s No. 4 economy saw its GDP rise 0.9 percent over the first three months of this year from a quarter ago, the highest in two years.
The conference marked the first trade promotion meeting that Park presided over since she took office on Feb. 25.
The new leader promised to come up with sweeping deregulation to help businesses invest in future growth engines.
“There is a study that shows regulations cost almost 10 percent of national output. Deregulation is an effective tool to galvanize economic growth without having to channel much money,” she said.
“Many companies face hardships because of irrational regulations… To make people feel the effects of deregulation, cooperation with the National Assembly is crucial.”
Specifically, Park pointed her finger at excessive rules, which work as stumbling blocks for convergence industries, a major pillar to buttress the Park administration’s “creative economy.”
“To activate the creative economy, which is a major economic direction for the new administration, regulations blocking convergence should be scrapped,” Park said.
“Now is an era when there is a limit for growth in expanding existing markets. To chalk up growth and exports as well as generate jobs, it is essential to drop such regulations.”
Park added the country is required to raise the number of exporters among SMEs, which is substantially lower compared to advanced economies such as Germany.
“Currently, merely 2.8 percent of our SMEs export their products. More players need to advance into global markets,” she said.
“We have to offer proactive support and advice not only to domestic market-oriented companies but also to ones, which newly began to tap into the global scene.”
She asked officials to take full advantage of the country’s free trade pacts with the United States, the European Union and South American countries.