Busan-Jinhae Free Economic Zone Turns to Beijing to Attract Chinese Investors

FTZ News: Officials from the Busan-Jinhae Free Economic Zone sat down with a Beijing investment agency in Shanghai on Nov. 5. They were looking for Chinese companies that might want to set up in South Korea, the authority said Friday.

The agency is the Beijing Investment Promotion Service Center. It answers to the Beijing municipal government, and its job is to build investment networks at home and overseas, match projects with investors and help companies once they are interested. The Busan side laid out its port logistics and advanced manufacturing setup, along with its main development projects. Both sides talked about using the center’s contacts among local firms to find candidates.
“We will step up efforts to identify promising local companies and strengthen follow-up consultations so they lead to actual investment,” said Park Sung-ho, the authority’s commissioner.

The authority wants to move past the briefings and memorandums it has already done. The next step, it says, is finding companies and getting them into a room.

This is not the first China trip of the year. In March the authority held an investment briefing in Shenzhen for about 150 officials from companies and financial institutions. In June it signed memorandums with several bodies, including the Qidong Economic Development Zone Management Committee in Jiangsu Province. That same month it met the Korean Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai and the Shanghai office of South Gyeongsang Province. The subject was whether Korean companies working in China might move back or expand at home.

After the working talks, the group went to “Beijing Night,” an event hosted by the Beijing city government, and used the evening to pitch the zone to local officials and business people.

No companies were named from the Beijing talks, and no investment figures came out of them. The report does not say when the follow-up meetings will start./.