THE NEWLY INDUSTRIALISING COUNTRIES
Speech for the Secretary of State to deliver in South Korea
1. Introductory remarks7
The NICS as export markets
2. My predecessor as Secretary of State for Trade visited your
country in 1977. In that year your Gross National Product was
around $31 billion. In 1979, I believe, it will be a remarkable
$58 billion. This reflects the industrial growth which is
transforming South Korea into a major trading nation. You are a
prime example of one of the few economic success stories of the
1970's - the emergence of the so-called "Newly Industrialising
Countries". So, speaking in Korea, I think it is right for me to
say something about our attitude in Britain to this new and
important development on the international trade scene.
3. My starting point is that Britain, like Korea, is a trading
country. Exports provide some 30 per cent of our national income.
We export some $200 million a day. So we have a vital interest in
the growth of world trade and a special interest in markets like
your own, which are expanding faster than world trade as a whole.
In the first eleven months of last year, for example, UK exports
increased in money value by nearly 14 per cent. But our exports to
Korea grew by nearly 17 per cent. We had similarly above-average
rates of growth in/other NICS - nearly 26 per cent in Hong Kong;
some
and nearly 20 per cent in Mexico. Lookin.