OECD Focuses on Korea's FTAs

DPM Kwon tells Korea's FTAs to OECD Ministerial Board Meeting in Paris

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance and Economy Kwon O-kyu attended the Meeting of Ministerial Board of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development held in Paris May 15-16.
Attending the meeting included finance ministers of 30 member countries and non-member countries like Russia and China and India. The top economic planner of the Korean government also led a delegation to London to conduct an investment relations session for Korea.
Major agenda for the OECD meeting included the progress of globalization, economic growth and balance, reform and growth, other issues such as the trends of the world economy.
Deputy Prime Minister Kwon as a lead speaker spoke on the subject of "Globalization and Growth and Balance"on the first day of the global meeting. He explained Korea's experiences on liberalization of its economy and globalization, especially Korea's promotion of free trade agreement with a number of countries at the same time.
He said liberalization and globalization have become a trend that cannot be rejected, despite the problems of widening gap between the rich and poor countries in the world. He said the benefits from globalization emerges gradually in a long period of time and due to the emergence of damage from the development occurs in a short period of time, political leadership is need to continue to promote globalization.
Despite opposition to FTAs by some quarters of the country, specially, the farm sector, Korea has opted to negotiate FTAs with a number of countries at the same time including the U.S., EU, and China, all of them with large economies because it saw it as a solution to its low-birth rates and aging workforce problems backed up by the political decision by the Participatory government of President Roh Moo-hyun.
The top economic planner of Korea also advised that the promotion of globalization needs to be should be pushed without fear through past experiences like a vaccine. In the case of Korea, the confidence gained through its FTA with Chile, especially, on the opening of the farm sector, enabled the government to go for FTA negotiations with countries like the U.S., Canada, India, ASEAN and China.
He went on to say that the government needed measures to take care of damages done to the sectors from FTAs and the government instituted a special law for the purposes and established support funds.
In order to solve the growing gap between rich and poor, it is necessary to continue to create jobs and sound macro-economic policies to narrow the gap between economic fluctuations since it's the low-income strata that gets impacts from economic trends first. nw