Brnabic visits South Korea

SEOUL - Serbian PM Ana Brnabic, who is on an official visit to South Korea, said on Friday she was pleased the two countries had signed an agreement on mutual promotion and protection of investments earlier in the day.

She said a meeting of Serbian and South Korean delegations and a tete-a-tete discussion with her counterpart Han Duck-soo had been extremely important and successful.

"I am very pleased and proud that today we succeeded in officially signing an agreement on mutual promotion and protection of investments at very short notice. I would like to thank His Excellency the PM of the Republic of Korea for the hospitality. We feel at home here," Brnabic said after the meetings.

Han said important steps had been made towards advancing the cooperation between the two countries in the future, including in trade, which he noted was growing at a high rate.

He said the focus would be on South Korean investments in Serbia, which he said was an ideal hub for expanding South Korean business operations in Europe.

Brnabic said Serbia had political as well as economic ambitions in the cooperation with South Korea.

She said companies such as LG, Kia and Hyundai were just a few of South Korean conglomerates that could serve as a new impetus to economic growth and development in Serbia.

"That is also the purpose of this agreement - to promote and protect those investments. As we discussed at the meeting, we will also continue to work on a FTA and an economic partnership. They (South Korea) have already completed the part regarding a public debate. Serbia has finished the first phase and I hope that by the end of the year we will have the first round of talks about an agreement on economic partnership and that we will be able to sign it soon," Brnabic noted.

She expressed the hope Han would visit Serbia soon and also announced that Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic would meet with his South Korean counterpart in late September.

She noted that lithium had been an indispensable discussion topic of her meetings in Seoul.

"As many as three out of the world's six largest corporations that manufacture batteries for electric cars - in which lithium is the main component - are South Korean. Like when I visited Singapore at the end of last year, there are always questions like 'How can you afford not to use a resource that is so important in the world today?' It is something that would make our economy open to different kinds of investments," Brnabic said.