A delegation from the Dominican Republic’s Export and Investment Center (CEI-RD) arrived here last Sunday for a weeklong visit to meet with government officials and companies, as well as for an investment seminar at the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency in Seoul on Wednesday.

The Dominican Republic has led the Caribbean in foreign direct investment for years. The country received about $2 billion in foreign investment last year. Some 45 percent of FDI in the Caribbean is destined for the island nation.

“These figures show you that foreign investors trust the Dominican Republic,” said Jean Alain Rodriguez, executive director of the CEI-RD. “If these numbers continue at this pace, the Dominican Republic can develop as impressively as Korea did over the past decades.”

The island nation is forging new cooperative links with South Korea. Dominican Ambassador to South Korea Grecia Pichardo said she is confident the visit will spur Dominican exports to East Asia.

One of the most significant joint projects is the Knowledge Sharing Program between the CEI-RD and the Korea Development Institute.

The KSP, launched in 2008, is now entering its sixth phase, focused on the development of a financial institution to promote export capacity and industrial competitiveness in the Dominican Republic, similar to the Export-Import Bank of Korea.

Rodriguez met with officials on the KSR. He met Oh Young-kyo, executive director of Future Global Institute, a liaison group for KSP; Shim Jin-kie, director of the Korean Packing Center, on food packaging technology; and Shim Seop of Eximbank.

Dominican President Danilo Medina announced his full support for this initiative, aiming to launch the new institution in June by transforming the National Development Bank of Housing and Production into the Dominican Bank of Export Development.

South Korean ties to the Caribbean have been extremely shallow for most of their half-century history, but in the mid-2000s Seoul began to upgrade its foreign policy presence there, as it bolstered its diplomatic relations with developing nations around the world.

On top of Korea’s regional ties with the Caribbean, bilateral ties between the Dominican Republic and South Korea stepped up a notch in the mid-2000s. When President Leonel Fernandez visited South Korea in 2006, the two nations signed 20 cooperative agreements.

South Korea still only has two ambassador-level diplomatic missions in the Caribbean, one in the Dominican Republic and one in Jamaica. South Korea does not have diplomatic relations with Cuba.

By Philip Iglauer (ephilip2011@heraldcorp.com)