According to Yonhap News,

(BUSAN=Yonhap News) Vietnam expects its recently concluded free trade agreement with South Korea to "open a door for further cooperation" in the trade and investment fields, Hanoi's prime minister said Thursday.

South Korea and Vietnam announced Wednesday the effective conclusion of a free trade deal that could boost bilateral trade, following more than two-year-long negotiations.

The agreement covers 17 areas, including products, service and investment, but the two sides agreed to exclude rice, a key staple food for Koreans.

"The FTA will help the two sides open a door for further cooperation in all areas including investment and trade," Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung said in a joint interview with a group of reporters in Busan.

ASEAN is seeking to launch the ASEAN Community by the end of 2015 as part of its efforts to deepen integration in the region. ASEAN is a large single market of more than 600 million people with a combined economic output of about $2.4 trillion.

The creation of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), one of three pillars for the ASEAN Community, has been pursued in order to expand economic cooperation in an array of fields such as human resources development, education and financial policies.

The move is widely expected to prompt ASEAN to grow into a single market with gross domestic product of $3 trillion and a population of about 640 million.

Dung called the envisioned launch of the AEC "a milestone in the regional economic integration," adding that the move will also benefit Seoul's bid to further tap the ASEAN market's production lines and supply chains.

"This is a great opportunity for the ROK (Republic of Korea) to scale up exports and investments in the ASEAN market," Dung noted. "I trust that with the already good platforms and the birth of the AEC, the Vietnam-ROK economic ties will blossom in all aspects."

sooyeon@yna.co.kr

Copyrights Yonhap News. All Rights Reserved.

Source Text

Source: Yonhap News (December. 11, 2014)