Korea, Chile Resume Trade Talks

Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy building (provided by Yonhap News Agency)  The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said it held the 11th Korea-Chile Free Trade Commission in Seoul on Oct. 19 and discussed the status of implementation of the agreement and ways to improve it. The commission was a follow-up measure to implement plans to strengthen trade and investment cooperation agreed upon at the summit between the two countries in July. By resuming the Free Trade Commission, which had been suspended since 2016, the two sides agreed to accelerate working-level discussions on upgrading the FTA. Park Geun-oh, director general for trade agreement policy at the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, and Felipe Lopeandia Vieland, director of the Bilateral Economic Affairs Division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile, served as chief delegates for their respective sides. The two delegations shared the status of efforts to revise product-specific rules of origin and closely reviewed pending issues that arose in the course of implementing the FTA. In particular, ways to advance negotiations to improve the Korea-Chile FTA, including cooperation in the minerals sector, were a key agenda item. Chile is a country rich in critical mineral resources, and the discussion was seen as an effort to reorganize the existing goods trade-centered agreement into a structure that reflects the latest trade environment, including supply chain cooperation. The Korea-Chile FTA, which took effect in 2004, has served as a bridge for economic exchanges between the two countries over the past 22 years. Bilateral trade, which stood at $1.57 billion before the agreement took effect in 2003, rose to $6.4 billion last year, increasing more than fourfold and supporting the expansion of South Korean companies into Latin American markets. Based on the discussions at this commission, the two countries plan to continue negotiations to improve the FTA and expand the scope of economic cooperation.