President Eun Seong-soo of Korea Export and Import Bank delivers his New Year address at a ceremony to kick off the new year 2018 held on Jan. 2 at the bank in Seoul.(Photos: Eximbank)

President Eun Seong-soo of Korea Export and Import Bank in his New year address said the bank should study its overseas operation so the bank can create tangible benefits for its investors and the general population.

“We should make sure our financial services would support the SMEs and middle-level firms to secure their competitive edges in the markets they operate and be of great help during their growing processes,” he said. He said they should also think about whether their financial services are intuitive enough to help high value-added industries in the age of the 4th Industrial Revolution, which includes AI and other new technologies.

Eximbank will closely cooperate with the government and the related organizations to strengthen the capital market to help corporate restructuring. The bank will also play its proper role as a policy loan bank in strengthening industrial competitiveness, not only individual business firms.

The bank should manage the External Economic Cooperation Fund transparently so money supports the sustainable growth of emerging nations, but also to the Korean firms planning to go overseas. 

The bank should also scheme the use its policy loans to be prepare for the resumption of inter-Korean dialogue in the direction of supplementing the use of the financial support system.

The bank should find out whether its loans are being funneled effectively, including such matters as the objective management of loans at all times.

“We have to renew our minds all the time to conduct reform after reform so that we would be able to provide the loans to the customers’ satisfaction,” the Eximbank president said. The South Korean government is offering $1 billion in concessional loans over a six-year period to finance key infrastructure programs of the Philippines, the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) said yesterday.

In a statement, NEDA said it welcomed the Korean government’s assistance, which was made through the Export-Import Bank of Korea (KEXIM), the country’s official export credit agency.

Selected Philippine government agencies recently met with KEXIM to discuss possible projects that may form part of the KEXIM pipeline in the current medium term, NEDA said.

Among the other agencies present during the meeting were the Departments of Finance, Transportation, Energy, Agriculture, Public Works and Highways, and Information and Communications Technology as well as the National Irrigation Authority and National Electrification Administration.

“Transport, ICT and energy infrastructure were identified as priority areas in the proposed cooperation, considering Korea’s comparative advantage in these sectors,” NEDA said. The Philippines and South Korea are set to finalize the framework agreement in August 2017, NEDA said.

NEDA Undersecretary Rolando Tungpalan said Korea’s offer of assistance would boost the Philippine government’s efforts to carry out its infrastructure program, which requires roughly P8.4 trillion.

Apart from concessional loans, the KEXIM is also offering its support through its Knowledge Sharing Program facility, a knowledge-driven economic cooperation program that will allow Korea to share its successes and failures and propose applicable policy recommendations.

KEXIM also expressed its willingness to assist in the Philippines’ pre-investment activities, including project preparation, and feasibility studies and plans formulation, through the bank’s project preparation facility. According to NEDA, the assistance of the Korean government increases the prospects to implement projects under the Philippine Development Plan(PDP) 2017-2022, the blueprint for the country’s development plan under the Duterte administration.