Abuja – South Korea has reiterated its support for Nigeria’s development process in line with the present administration’s agenda.
South Korea’s Ambassador to Nigeria, Noh Kyu-duk said this at a seminar on “Moving toward the Sustainable Development Goals: Lessons from the Case of Republic of Korea” in Abuja on Wednesday.
Kyu-duk told News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on the sideline of the event that both countries had healthy economic cooperation.
He added that the volume of trade stood at $4.4 billion in 2014.
The envoy said Nigeria was one of South Korea’s major economic partners, stressing that both parties were looking to explore the non-oil sector to enhance bilateral ties.[pro_ad_display_adzone id=”70560″]“We are importing a lot of Liquefied Natural Gas from Nigeria and exporting electronics, vehicles, machinery and others to Nigeria.
“Our economic characteristics are complementary to each other and we have a lot of room to develop our trade and we can do a lot together”, he said.
He recalled that Korea developed its economy over the years through effective leadership, human resource development, policy consistency and rural development.
Kyu-duk said Korean government was able to share its experience with Nigeria through the projects initiated by the Korea International Cooperation Development Agency (KOICA).
Mr Jung Hoon Sang, Country Director, KOICA Nigeria, said the introduction of Korean Government’s Country Partnership Strategy (CPS), enabled it to assist Nigeria in its development process.
Jung said the agency had projects with Nigeria that focused on the areas of human resource development, vocational training and governance.
He explained that the CPS was a three-year programme which started in 2012 and would end in 2015.
The country director, however, said the agency would focus on the ongoing projects it had in Nigeria to ensure completion by 2018.
“For now, we are focusing on ongoing Abuja Model School, which is a big project, the e-government project and new training courses including country specific courses.
“Nigeria is not on the list of priority countries for the next CPS because we have to include other smaller countries.
“But we are not decreasing the perspective of aid volume because of our commitment to ongoing projects”, he said.
KOICA, founded in 1991, is an agency of the Government of the Republic of Korea responsible for the delivery of grants and technical cooperation to help the socio-economic advancement of developing countries.
The Korean government allocated $15 million to the establishment of model junior and senior secondary schools in Abuja from 2013 to 2018.
It also invested $8.56 million into training 22,625 government officials under its e-government project with Nigeria which started in 2013 and is expected to end in 2018. (NAN)
