A ceremony to celebrate the 42nd Commerce Day took place on March 18 at Coex in Samseong-dong, southern Seoul with Prime Minister Lee Wan-koo attending led by Chairman Park Yongmaan of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Prime Minister Lee in his congratulatory address said last year was very good despite the global economic slowdown with tremendous achievements in exports in its scale of growth, export figures, and trade surplus, among others. But all of these were possible thanks to reform made by all the commerce and industry people who nurtured the competitive strength of the manufacturing industry.
The prime minister said the government has been behind the Three-Year Economic Reform Plan especially focusing on four major areas of the economy, such as the public sector, labor, finance, and education to remake the Nation’s 2nd structure. The government has set aside 30 trillion won in fund to provide financial support to businesspeople so that they can make daring investments in reformative business areas and the government is also ready to deregulate rules that bind the feet of the investors. The reduction of the key interest rate to a one percent level last week aims at spurring investments for economic growth and private consumption. The prime minister said the FTAs signed with many countries around the world should be taken advantage of as new opportunities for the growth of Korean business firms and the economy. The FTA with China in particular should be used to make Korea a global business center with China being the largest export market in the world, Lee said.
If investments are expanded and the domestic market is revitalized, many jobs will be created through diverse efforts. Success is a part of our DNA and DNAs for miracle and new chances will come if we regain our confidence and wisdom. President Park Geun-hye toured four countries in the Middle East not long ago to set off the signal for a new take-off point for the economy. The leaders of SMEs who accompanied the Chief Executive on the tour signed 1 trillion won worth of the contracts with business firms in the region, raising expectations for the second Middle East boom for Korea with an increasing number of young workers from Korea to be sent to the region for work.
The government is ready to help to business and industries achieve challenges as much as it can so that the economy may be revived.
Chairman Park in his congratulatory address, said most senior businesspeople created something from nothing when everything was in short supply in such areas as overseas construction and sales, a business sector so hard that dried up the blood in the people working in the area and the products from the sweats they shed created the base for the Miracle on the Han, and astounding economic growth in Korea. He continued on to say that the DNAs of all the commerce and industry people were behind the miraculous growth of the Korean economy as they fought with all kinds of tough challenges along the way to get them out of their ways. “On this auspicious day, we ought to inherit the spirit of challenge that drove those who went before us and develop it further with our own creativeness and reform to achieve the mission given to us in our age,” the KCCI head said. The period we are in is a critical one to decide our future and the government too, has been driving the economic growth under the Three-year Economic Reform Plan, and we, too, should do our best with the new determination to walk all the way for reform and growth, Park said.
The auspicious ceremony presented medals and citations to 246 business executives for their contributions to the national economy before some 1,000 participants at the ceremony. Other important participants included Minister Yoon Sang-jick of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, Chairman Kim In-ho of the Korea International Trade Association, Chairman Park Chung-hong of the Korean Chamber of Commerce in Japan, and related legislators and government officials.
Among the winners of medals and citations were Chairman Hyun Jung-eun of Hyundai Group, who won the Industrial Merit Gold Medal, Vice Chairman Chang Sae-wook of Dongkuk Steel who won the Industrial Merit Silver Medal, while six others won the industrial citations, followed by 15 who came away with Presidential Citations, among 246 medal and citation winners at the ceremony.
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