Prime Minister Narendra Modi began his two-day visit to South Korea with an address at the India-Korea Business Symposium and launched the Startup Grand Challenge.

Speaking at the business symposium which had both Indian and South Korean business leaders in attendance, the PM said that “Korea was and still remains our role model of economic growth”.

Underlining the country’s achievements in the last few years, the PM said that India is going through a great transition which includes a move from the agriculture to industry, from a closed economy to to a globally interlinked and from “red tape to red carpet”.

“India-Korea business relations have come a long way in the past decade, and especially closer in the last few years,” PM Modi said as he reminded the gathering that it was his third interaction with South Korean business leaders in a span of just 12 months.

“India is among top 10 trade partners of Korea and India is the 6th largest export destination for Korean goods. Our trade volume has reached 21.5 billion Dollars for the calendar year 2018,” he pointed out.

The PM said that negotiations on Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement have been fast-tracked to achieve the bilateral trade target of 50 billion Dollars by 2030.

Korean investments into India, the PM said, have reached a cumulative figure of almost $6 billion.

“We are well set to become a 5 trillion dollar economy in the near future. No other large economy in the world is growing at over 7 per cent year after year,” the PM said crediting the achievement to policy decisions such as the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

Pitching India as an attractive destination for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), the PM said that the country’s ranking in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business has jumped 65 places in the last four years to 77th.

“And, we are determined to move into the top 50 next year,” he added with confidence.

Noting that 500 million of India’s population will be urban by 2025, the PM said that India and South Korea have set $10 billion under Korea’s Economic Development Cooperation Fund and Export Credit to finance India’s infrastructure development.

“I wish to see more and more Korean businesses turning their attention to India,” the PM said.

The PM also launched the Startup Grand Challenge on the India-Korea Startup Hub which will help channelise the entrepreneurial capacity between Indian and Korean Startups to work together and build solutions for challenges facing the world.

The PM arrived in Seoul earlier today in a bid to bolster the “Act East Policy”.

Soon after the PM emplaned for Seoul, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson, Raveesh Kumar, tweeted that the visit will “strengthen our special strategic partnership with South Korea and add dynamism to our Look East Policy”.

Ahead of his visit, the prime minister described South Korea as an important partner for India’s key initiatives such as ‘Make in India’, and said as fellow democracies the two countries share values and vision for regional and global peace.

Modi is visiting South Korea on the invitation of President Moon Jae-in. This is his second visit to the Republic of Korea since 2015 and a second summit meeting with President Moon Jae-in.