OREANDA-NEWS. More than 700 businesspeople and top government officials from Korea, Latin America and the Caribbean participated in the Korea-LAC Business Summit March 26-27, deepening trade and investment ties between the two dynamic regions.

Over the past quarter century, trade between Korea and Latin America and the Caribbean has grown 17% per year, reaching \$54 billion in 2014. Korean investment in the region has expanded ten-fold in the last decade alone.

During the event, entrepreneurs, export and investment promotion agencies and representatives of governments from both regions examined opportunities for expanding business in areas such as information technology, the environment and energy. Panels discussed diverse financing options for small and medium size companies (SMEs), as well as the great untapped potential of low-income consumers in the so-called “base of the pyramid” in Latin America.

“Korean companies employ thousands of people in our countries, ranging from factory workers to engineers,” said IDB President Luis Alberto Moreno at the event’s inauguration. “Their presence not only translates into well-paying manufacturing jobs; it also expands and upgrades our industrial capacity and allows many smaller Latin American firms to become part of thriving global value chains making some of the world’s most complex and innovative products.”

Korea, home to numerous innovative multinationals, is a good potential market for absorbing a wider variety of more sophisticated manufactured goods made in Latin America and the Caribbean, which would go a long way toward helping to diversify the region’s export mix. That’s the message contained in a new special report from the IDB called Korea and Latin America and the Caribbean: Striving for a Diverse and Dynamic Relationship, published in English and Korean, which was presented at the business gathering.