Awarded in 14 years since 2007, winning in competition with 188 investment promotion-related agencies across the globe
In global recognition of non-fact-to-face investment attraction system in healthcare sector
Invest Korea, the country's investment promotion unit under the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA), was chosen as the winner of the 2021 Investment Promotion Awards by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) on October 19.
Since 2002, UNCTAD organizes the annual United Nations Investment Promotion Awards under the chosen topical subjects. This year, the subjects were achievements in the third goal (SDG3 'Health and Well-being') of UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and Investment Attraction in Healthcare sector which is key to ride out COVID-19, and conducted evaluation of activities of 188 agencies across the globe in the past 3 years.
James Zhan of UNCTAD, announcing INVEST Korea as the winner, said "Invest Korea's efforts to provide investment information on healthcare through various online channels have been recognized". Non-face-to-face investment attraction activities of Invest Korea through its website, SNS, and video that cover △industry information△ investment incentives △investment candidate regions △companies to invest, seemed to have been received well internationally.
Invest Korea turned all IR activities into non-face-to-face ones, including that for healthcare, when the pandemic began raging early last year. In addition, it produced and distributed online information on investment strrengths and investment environment by industry in promotional video format. 'Invest Korea Week (IKW)', a nation's flagship investment attraction event, was also held via broadcast and online in November last year.
* IKW was viewed more than 1 million times, and its sub-event Promising Industry Seminar (including healthcare) recorded more than 40,000 views on Youtube.
Although there was a concern about performance of investment attraction with a swift turn to non-fact-to-face activities, it seems to have performed successfully to date. Invest Korea attracted foreign investment worth USD18.21 billion in healthcare and other sectors from the 1st to the 3rd quarters of this year. In particular, it attracted substantial investment in the healthcare sector, e.g., attracted R&D Center (Busan, USD 152million) of Prestige Biopharma, a Singapore-based antibody bio pharmaceutical company, and attracted vaccine materials plant (Incheon, USD 52 million) of Cytiva, a global bio-science company.
Shawn Chang, Commissioner of Invest Korea said, "This award is the first one since 2014 at the agency level, and the first UNCTAD-organized one since we joined the advanced group of UNCTAD in July this year," adding "we will help Korea become global factory of advanced industries by expanding investment attraction of advanced industries including Korea New Deal, and parts, materials, and equipment, as well as healthcare sector."
Source: Invest KOREA (October 20, 2021)