Seoul (VNA) - The KoreaTrade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) said on May 10 that it will relocateits Southeast Asia headquarters from Singapore to the Vietnamese capital city ofHanoi to support Korean companies doing businesses in the fast-growing market.

KOTRA said the decision was made inconsideration of the growing number of Korean companies that are based inVietnam or that plan to invest in the Southeast Asian nation.

According to KOTRA, bilateral trade betweenVietnam and the Republic of Korea (RoK) reached 63.9 billion USD in 2017.Vietnam is now the fourth largest trading partner of the RoK while the country isVietnam's second-largest.

The agency also plans to open new business centresin Ahmedabad, an industrial city in western India, and in Da Nang, a commercialhub in Vietnam’s central region.

KOTRA will expand business centres in promisingmarkets to keep up with the changing trade environment, said CEO Kwon Pyung-oh.

The agency is currently operating 10 local headoffices and 127 business centres in 86 countries around the world.

Vietnam and the RoK are working to raise two-waytrade to 100 billion USD by 2020. The RoK ranked first among 125 nations and territoriespouring capital into Vietnam in 2017, with total registered capital hitting57.7 billion USD.-VNA