The Incheon Free Economic Zone (IFEZ) held a ceremony at the grand auditorium of the G Tower on July 19 to declare the IFEZ 2030 Vision and strategies to cope with rapid future changes, based on the development achievements it has made for the past 13 years.
During the ceremony, the IFEZ declared its new vision “Global Business Frontier.”
In his speech, Mayor Yoo Jeong-bok said, “As advanced countries have already pursued metropolitan economic zones with a focus on major cities, now is the time to go for the Pan-West Sea Economic Sphere with Incheon Metropolitan City being its axis, and a driving force behind it should be the IFEZ.”
He added, “The vision ‘Global Business Frontier’ and detailed action plans being disclosed today should not end up simply setting goals, but a process of building groundwork for growth of both Incheon and Korea.”
He also called for the IFEZ to be at the vanguard of making Incheon citizens happy.
The vision calls for the IFEZ to be reborn into a “global business frontier” after looking at Incheon’s historical and geological value as Korea’s first mover and frontier at a new light since the opening of Incheon Port in 1883.
The four core action strategies are designed to build Incheon Metropolitan City’s own economic platforms; global economic platforms; a service industry hub; a convergence industry hub; and a smart city.
The strategy for a global economic platform calls for building an economic regime with a focus on Incheon by attracting investors through the Pan-West Sea Economic Sphere being set as a regulation-free zone, nurturing the funnel effect of expanding intercity imports and export and bilateral trade through the Korea-China Free Trade Agreement platform, and fortifying a global sustainable economic platform based on the foundations as a city of international institutions and the financial industry of the Green Climate Fund. To this end, Incheon plans to attract BIE-sanctioned expos as well as global companies and their regional headquarters in collaboration with the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and KOTRA.
Incheon and Weihai plan to form their joint committee in the second half of this year to improve non-tariff barriers and operate a pilot zone among Korea-China FTA projects. The two cities are to form and operate a logistics forum in the pilot zone.
Incheon plans to sign an MOU on e-commerce with Weihai as part of a plan to build e-commerce platforms with silk road partnership cities and designate and operate logistics complexes in exclusive use of e-Commerce.
Service Industry Hub
The Ministry of Strategy and Finance (MOSF) and other ministries have announced a plan to focus on the nurturing of convergence and interdisciplinary service industries. In this regard, the Incheon Metropolitan City government seeks to make the IFEZ one of the leading convergence and interdisciplinary service industry complexes.
In the global education field, the IFEZ plans to expand the number of global university campuses from the current four to fashion, hotel, music and medical schools. It plans to fortify a virtuous cycle regime of collaboration among industry, campus and research circles to nurture the manpower necessary for the IFEZ, to be hired by tenant investor companies there.
Convergence Industry Hub
In the bio-pharmaceutical field, the IFEZ plans to expand production capacity and maintain a head start in global production capacity advantages by continuously attracting global bio companies.
The IFEZ Bio Analysis and Support Center plans to ramp up such industry support as manpower development and networking. In particular, the 11th construction section, the bio special complex, will focus on attracting bio-health, medical cure and diagnosis companies and provide support to nurture bio SMEs so that the so-called Songdo Bio Front can be expanded.
Smart City
The IFEZ plans to build its own smart city test-bed and develop services by promoting collaboration among the public and private sectors. It plans to develop the IFEZ Smart City Integration Platform into a so-called K-Smart City Model in cooperation with the MOSF and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT).
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