With growing signs of an early end of the Iraq war, the South Korean government and companies have started their endeavor for a share of the post-war reconstruction, national news agency Yonhap News reported on Thursday.
The South Korean Ministry of Construction and Transportation (MOCT) is reportedly seeking to help South Korean companies form strategic alliances with US firms and win contracts from them.
A civilian-governmental delegation will be sent to Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in early May as MOCT's effort to assess the Middle East construction market, said Yonhap. And MOCT's Minister Chi Jong-chan will also travel to the region later.
Moreover, the ministry is mulling to dispatch an examining team to Iraq once a new government is established there.
Expecting the United States and Britain would play an important role in the rehabilitation work of Iraq, local construction companies are also seeking to jointly tap the post-war market with American and British builders, said Yonhap.
Hyundai Engineering & Construction Co., the biggest construction firm of South Korea, is planning to send a seven-member team to the United States this Sunday to sound out the possibility of its participation, said Yonhap.
South Korean enterprises won only two contracts worth US$8.3 dollars during the rehabilitation of Kuwait after the 1991 Gulf War.
(Xinhua News Agency April 10, 2003)
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