South Korea keen to see second wave of investments in India, says ambassador Seong-Ho at CII event in Ahmedabad
Lee Seong-Ho said that while his embassy was seeing potential in the ship-building industry and trying to convince South Korean ship-builders to come to India, “there is a limit the government can interfere in this process”.
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Seong-Ho, who visited the CG Semi Private Limited and the Micron Technology sites in Sanand, said that semiconductors were at the “forefront of his agenda” on this trip to Gujarat. (Express Photo/Leena Misra)South Korea is keen to see a “second wave of investments in India” after the mid-nineties when companies such as Hyundai, Samsung and LG made their entries, said Lee Seong-Ho, Ambassador, Republic of Korea (RoK) to India, in an exclusive interaction with industry leaders during an event organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Gujarat here on Friday. The positives in the relationships between the two countries were that there were “no irritants between our two governments”, said the ambassador adding that he had set “an unofficial” target to “double the trade volume, double the number of (South) Korean companies based in India, double the investment from both sides and double the people-to-people exchange”.
He said that while his embassy was seeing potential in the ship-building industry and trying to convince South Korean ship-builders to come to India, “there is a limit the government can interfere in this process”.
Seong-Ho was on a four-day visit to the state for Gujarat SemiConnect Conference that concluded Friday in Gandhinagar during which he also met Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel. The conference witnessed MoUs worth Rs 15,000 crore signed on the first day, with companies such as Jabil India, Tata Electronics, Taiwan Surface Mounting Technology (TSMT) and others. The ambassador also said that from his conversations with those in the semiconductor industry he felt that, “For the time being, the chances of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, the two biggest (semiconductor companies) having investment in India is a bit remote”.
Seong-Ho, who visited the CG Semi Private Limited and the Micron Technology sites in Sanand, said that semiconductors were at the “forefront of his agenda” on this trip to Gujarat.
“I can see the burgeoning semiconductor industry in Gujarat and I was told that they need a proper ecosystem to make this semiconductor work properly and they need more than hundreds of semiconductor SMEs working on parts… We still believe there is huge room for collaboration in the area of semiconductors…all the Korean semiconductor MSMEs have world’s leading technologies. I am sure if they come in, it will help India to build a proper semiconductor ecosystem,” said Seong-Ho.
Ship-building industry
After the first wave of South Korean investments in India in the mid-nineties, there are currently 500-600 companies based in India in Haryana, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, said Seong-Ho. “But my fundamental question was why Korean companies are not taking advantage of the bigger, more drastic reforms made under the leadership of Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi . The whole world is witnessing a sea change in India for the last 10 years and we all know, but somehow we haven’t witnessed any major second wave of investments from Korea, so we decided to set this as our embassy’s goal and we tried to convince our government to have the second wave of Korean investments in India. Now for the time being we are focussing on some symbolic transformative industry namely ship building. Korea happens to be the world leader in the shipbuilding industry. I think there is a huge complementary potential in this industry,” he said.
According to Seong-Ho, an investment from the ship-building industry from South Korea could “give a huge positive signal to businesses and entrepreneurs in both countries, India and Korea and they can understand it’s about time to make our two countries much together”.
“If we can somehow trigger some symbolic movement I do believe in the near future I can see a second wave”, said the ambassador.
Honorary Consul General of Republic of Korea, and Rasna Group Chairman Piruz Khambhatta said that he had not seen any other country get inside India as Korea had in the last five years, describing it as a “soft power”.
Khambhatta, who is also on the CII’s national committee on affirmative action and special abilities, urged the ambassador for a “freer visa regime between India and South Korea, and more flights”.
Other speakers included president of the Korean Association of Gujarat Young Soon Ko, vice chairman CII Gujarat State Council Premraj Kashyap and co-chairman CIDD WR Sub Committee on International Trade Vinod Agrawal.
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