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The ICA (International Cooperation Agency for Korea IT) will construct an overseas support system by advanced stages from the second half of the year.
Sung-Kap Cho, president of the ICA said in a special interview with The Korea IT Times on the occasion of the ITU Telecomm Asia 2004, "The Agency is strengthening its existing IT overseas advance support business and to this end, the agency is concentrating its efforts on securing global IT marketing networks at home and abroad".
ICA is an organization set up by The Ministry of Information & Communication to support the IT industry's overseas marketing efforts in 2002 since IT is a growth engine of our economy, responsible for more than 30% of national exports as well as 16% of GDP.
The president said the Agency is engaging in activities such as international events in the interests of IT industry cooperation between nations, activation support foreign investment attraction, IT publicity, export consulting support through an export consultation center, and special personnel training for overseas IT marketing. At ITX (www.itx.or.kr), a representative IT domestic export information database on overseas market information receives over 300 inquiries a day. Some 50,000 IT export firms in total will be helped by the end of this year to expand their global networks, he added.
Regarding a means of counterbalancing the over-concentration items such as mobile communication terminals, memory as well as non-memory semiconductors, and LCD monitors in exports, the president pointed out, "This kind of concentration in IT export items has its origin in shortage of fundamental technology development capacity at home as well as the industry's peculiar specialization strategy".
Accordingly, to solve this problem of over concentration, first, relevant corporations have to boost their technology research development capacity that has been fragile to date. Second, the government has to nurture worldwide IT parts companies, and lastly corporations and policy support institutions ought to combine to launch new products, new technologies, and new services actively with the idea of gaining a return in two to three years, five years, and ten years respectively, the President noted.
In regard to the high potential markets such as BRICS, he said ICA has already dispatched an IT cooperation delegation to Central and South America (Brazil, and Mexico), and India during the first half of the year. Russia as well as China as slated to be visited by ICA delegations, adding that these countries need new strategies middle and long-haul standpoints in consideration of their market growth potential.
Mr. Cho explained that ICA's Brazil IT cooperation delegation has obtained a substantial contract of the amount of $1.5 million by holding a business talks regarding items such as high-speed wireless Backbone systems, DVR, SI, & wireless Data service solutions, and in India visible results have also been obtained, namely a substantial contract worth $6 million through negotiations on such as areas as mobile communication terminals, xDSL equipment, DVR PCB and so on.
The president said, "The Russia IT cooperation delegation slated for the latter half of the year is going to hold a negotiations regarding a CDMA terminal, mobile platform and SI. And in the case of China, the IT cooperation delegation will discuss the fields of electronic government, hospitals, bank NI, IC card, and wire/wireless contents.
With regard to the accomplishments of the IT839 support strategy, ICA is offering interested overseas parties information on nine new growth engine items through ITX.
Further, ICA is supporting comprehensive information technology cooperation between nations in the interests of IT industry cooperation, common standardization, and joint research methods such as open software, next-generation mobile communications, next-generation Internet, and digital broadcasting.
More information is available at www.icakorea.or.kr
