[Yonhap News Photo]
South Korean President Park Geun-hye will return home with more than 37 billion US dollars in a flurry of massive orders after her landmark state visit to Iran, the president's office said Monday.
South Korea and Iran concluded 59 economic cooperation accords in the fields of construction, infrastructure, energy, health and IT on the sidelines of a summit Monday between Park and her Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, in Tehran, Park's office said in Seoul.
Such accords would allow South Korea to secure orders valued at $37.1 billion in 30 construction and other large-scale development projects in Iran, it said.
Officials in Seoul say the lifting of international sanctions on Iran will open up South Korea's business opportunities across a host of sectors from construction to automobiles. They also predict a rise in South Korea's exports to Iran, the world's fourth-largest oil producer. Last year South Korea’s exports to Iran stood at 3.76 billion US dollars or just 0.7 percent of its total shipments.
In January, the International Atomic Energy Agency declared that Iran had fulfilled requirements to limit its nuclear activities, a step that automatically lifted nuclear-related economic sanctions imposed by the international community. The move ended a prolonged isolation that has driven Iran into a deep economic malaise. South Korea responded with the lifting of a ban on trade with Iran in nearly all sectors.
Analysts say South Korea's construction sector will greatly benefit from the lifting of sanctions on Iran. South Korean builders once had clinched deals worth $12 billion with Iran for decades, but since 2009, there have been few deals due to UN sanctions.
Iran plans to invest more than $100 billion that had been frozen under the economic sanctions into replenishing oil infrastructure, modernizing aged refinery facilities.
Aju News Lim Chang-won = cwlim34@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
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