BAGHDAD (Yonhap News) ― Iraq plans to launch reconstruction projects worth $300 billion in the next five years and hopes South Korean companies will take part in all of them, the country’s prime minister was quoted Sunday as saying.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki made the remark during a meeting in Baghdad with South Korea’s visiting National Assembly speaker Kang Chang-hee on Saturday, according to Kang’s spokesman Bae Sung-rye.
Should the Iraqi government give South Korea greater opportunities to participate in the country’s reconstruction efforts, South Korea is willing to share its development experience with the Middle Eastern nation, Kang said, according to the spokesman.
Maliki was also quoted as telling Kang that the Iraqi people have favorable views of South Korea thanks to the country’s troop dispatch to the country and that security problems in Iraq have made big improvements.
Kang said South Korea imports about $10 billion worth of crude oil from Iraq, and that South Korea’s development experience and Iraq’s rich natural resources will make them a “win-win” economic cooperation partner to each other, according to Bae.
Kang also invited Maliki to visit South Korea.
Iraq was the last leg of Kang’s four-nation trip that already took him to Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia.
