FTC boosts education program for foreign officials

The state-run Fair Trade Commission has expanded a three-year program to allow government officials from developing countries like Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to learn about economic development and policies to promote competitiveness.

The FTC said yesterday that the program will strive to offer more intensive training to officials in addition to the information provided since 2002 to 295 officials from 55 developing nations.

“We will develop an advanced system to teach officials from two Central Asian countries, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, about Korea’s policies to encourage competition and protect consumers. These two countries are emerging in terms of resource diplomacy and exports,” an FTC official said.

The FTC said it held the first course of the new training project dubbed “Competition and the Market Economic Development” yesterday at the Korea International Cooperation Agency Training Center in Seongnam, Gyeonggi.

Six officials from Uzbekistan and five officials from Kazakhstan participated in the training program, which will run through June 4.

According to the FTC, the Commonwealth of Independent States has recently been working on promoting effective competition to foster sustainable economic development, and to do so, has expressed significant interest in receiving support from Korea’s FTC, which successfully established market economy principles over the years.

The program will run for three years at basic, general and intensive levels. This year, the basic course is offered. The three-year program is composed of 11 professional lectures and discussions related to five modules including Korea’s economic development and competition policy, effective law enforcement against anti-competitive behavior, regulatory reform and competition advocacy.

By Kim Jung-yoon [kjy@joongang.co.kr]