As global digital transformation projects are on the rise, Korean ICT companies have turned to an export model in which they form consortia to explore foreign markets.
The Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) implemented a project to support the establishment of consortia to win foreign ICT projects a single SME company could not do last year.
The project led to the forming of 14 consortia among 42 companies specializing in smart city, security, 5G telecom, smart farm and AI sectors.
Nine consortia, more than half of the total, struck export contracts and MOUs worth a combined $32 million, proving the consortium market entry as a promising means to land global ICT projects.
Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) opens the “Integrated Korea Pavilion” to accommodate 91 Korean companies at CES 2023, which took place in Las Vegas form Jan. 5 to Jan. 8.
The achievement is owed to experts’ in-depth review designed to designate promising projects and full support by KOTRA’s oversea trade offices to win orders or strike contracts.
For an example, last November, an optical communications consortium - formed by six companies in the Gwangju area - set up a production joint-venture facility in Central Asia and struck an MOU worth $20 million with Uzebek Telecom.
KOTRA hosts an explanation session for each industry’s attracting investments for the year 2023, inviting local governments at KOTRA headquarters in Yeomgok-dong, Seoul, on Jan. 12. (Photos: KOTRA)
KOTRA Expands Exports for New Year Via Export Voucher Project
The export voucher project the government has implemented since 2017 is one of the nation’s representative export support projects, offering marketing services necessary for all processes, ranging from export preparations to entering foreign markets.
SMEs and mid-size enterprises are offered online coupon-type vouchers and they are given an opportunity to freely choose 8,000 export support services, being officers by 2,411 institutions, including those in overseas markets, foreign standard authentication within their limits.
A project to ramp up each industry’s global entry capabilities made its debut this year. It offers a three-stage support system: entry, growth and expansion, tailored to provide export support for the whole cycle according to companies’ overseas market entry capabilities.
Companies can submit applications by choosing each business, export and sales size.
Under a project to offer logistics export vouchers, SMEs and mid-size enterprises that experience logistics quagmire each are given a maximum of 20 million won.
The companies can save export logistics costs, such as international transportation costs and insurance premiums using the logistics export vouchers.
Jun Choon-woo, head of KOTRA’s SME, Mid-size Enterprise Division, said, “The export voucher project is a program tailored to meet companies’ export needs, and even if export conditions are worsened due to the sagging global economy, we’ll make efforts to make the export voucher project to act as a lighthouse to brighten SMEs and mid-size enterprises’ export routes.”
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