Korea's Policy Package for Enhancing its FTA Utilization and Implications for Korea's Policy

Inkyo Cheong
Additional contact information
Inkyo Cheong: Inha University

No DP-2014-11, Working Papers from Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)

Abstract: Korea’s trade with most of its 46 free trade agreement (FTA) partner countries has been expanded continuously. Its FTA utilization ratios were as low as 20% before 2010, and some suspicions regarding the benefits of FTA were raised, despite the government’s active promotion. But Korea recorded higher than 70% FTA utilization in the case of Korea-US FTA and the EU-Korea FTA in 2013. Today’s high performance could be achieved due to the strategic approach and diverse support mechanisms initiated by the government of Korea since 2010. The supporting programs for businesses included education courses for companies and consulting, workshops to explain the FTAs and provide information on FTAs, building the portals for FTAs, and the expos for FTAs in foreign countries. Several policy implications can be drawn from Korea’s experience in assisting businesses with FTA utilization. First, the major barriers that prevent companies from utilizing FTAs should be clearly identified. Secondly, coordination among national supporting agencies is critical in increasing the efficiency of the infrastructure assisting FTA utilization. Thirdly, governments should promote FTAs with large economies, which are expected to bring high economic gains in general. Fourthly, authorities of trade and industry should understand the importance of the quality of FTAs.

Keywords: : Free trade agreement (FTA); FTA utilization; rules of origin (ROO); tariff elimination; ASEAN-Korea FTA (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F15 F53 O53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages.
Date: 2014-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.eria.org/ERIA-DP-2014-11.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:era:wpaper:dp-2014-11

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ranti Amelia ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).