President Lee Myung-bak on Monday pledged economic support to help facilitate the Philippines’ national development plan in a bid to deepen bilateral cooperative ties, his office said.

During his talks with Philippines President Benigno S. Aquino III in Manila, Lee agreed to map out cooperation strategies to make the best of Korea’s development assistance to the Southeast Asian state.

Lee flew to the country for a state visit on Sunday after having attended a set of summits with the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations and other key partners in Bali, Indonesia, last week.

“The Philippines with its population topping the 100-million mark is a promising market for Korea,” Choe Geum-nak, senior presidential secretary for public relations, told reporters.

“There has been relatively little economic cooperation between the two nations, but we expect that given its recent high growth rate, (foreign) investment and tourism will increase in this country.”

The Philippines has been pushing ahead with its 2011-2016 development plan, which aims to achieve “comprehensive growth” through good governance and anti-corruption efforts.

Seoul seeks to help the plan with strategies including grant and loan programs. They are expected to be completed early next year, officials said.

Korea has helped modernize the country’s infrastructure under its three-year assistance program, which runs until 2013. It is to provide Manila with loans of up to $500 million through its Economic Development Cooperation Fund. The previous cap for the loan program was $300 million.

Following their talks, the two governments signed a set of agreements over cooperation in agriculture, construction and other areas that are expected to increase Korea’s role in the development of infrastructure there.

One of the agreements concerns a $300-million project to build a multi-purpose dam to provide water and electricity, and prevent floods in a 320-square-kilometer granary located south of Manila.

Another deal is related to the construction of a “multi-industry cluster” in Misamis Oriental in the southern part of the country. For this, Seoul plans to offer loans of around 9 billion won and official development assistance worth 2.9 billion won ($2.5 million).

While thanking his Philippines counterpart for the invitation to the country, Lee asked him to visit South Korea when it holds the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul in March, next year.

The leaders also discussed ways to protect their citizens living in each other’s countries. Some 48,000 Filipinos reside in Korea while about 100,000 South Koreans live in the Philippines.

The Philippines was the first Southeast Asian state with which Seoul established diplomatic ties. Since relations began in 1949, their ties have deepened in various areas.

The two-way trade volume has steadily increased in recent years. It reached $6.3 billion in 2009 and $9.3 billion in 2010. As of September, it was $8.1 billion. Korea is the fifth largest trading partner for the Philippines while the state is the 23rd largest for Korea.

By Song Sang-ho (sshluck@heraldcorp.com)