President of KOICA to visit Uzbekistan

During the visit, Mr. Kim is planning to pay a courtesy call on First Deputy Prime minister and visit the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations, Investments and Trade, the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection and the Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources. He is also scheduled to attend the launching ceremony of Saemaul Undong (literally “New Community Movement”) together with Development Cooperation Volunteers in Dostlik village, Bostanlik district of Tashkent region.

The Korea International Cooperation Agency was founded on April 1, 1991, as a government agency responsible for grant aid to support sustainable socio-economic development in developing countries through sharing Korea’s development experience as well as enhancing friendly and cooperative relationships with partner countries.

Over the last 22 years KOICA, jointly with the Government of the Republic of Uzbekistan, one of the primary partners,has worked on the 23 different projects, amounting to a total of more than $71 million, ranking 1st in volume among the Central Asia countries. From 1992 to 2013, more than 1,350Uzbek specialists were trained in Korea and since 1995 to 2013, more than 550 volunteers were dispatched from Korea to Uzbekistan for assisting KOICA programs throughout the country.

On 5 August 2014, the Korean and the Uzbekistan Governments concluded the 2014 grant aid arrangement. Due to the signing of this arrangement, the two new projects in 2014 are expected to be implemented in earnest - Project for establishment of Vocational Training Center in Shahrisabz city and Consulting on Capacity Building of Vocational Education in Uzbekistan (2014-2017/US$8 million) and Project for Strengthening Capacity of Uzstandard by Leveraging ICT and Establishing Master-plan (2014-2017/US$7 million).

As of today, KOICA is promoting 8 ongoing projects and various cooperation programs in Uzbekistan with the yearly budget mounting up to $9.2 million US dollars.