Daegu City Signs MOU for Robot Industry 'Supply Chain Scale-up'... "Focused Support on Funding, Technology, and Certification"

Small and Medium Business Corporation, Robot Industry Promotion Institute, and Daegyeong Robot Enterprise Promotion Association Together

Exterior view of the Robot Industry Promotion Institute located on Nowon-ro, Buk-gu, Daegu.

[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Choi Jae-ho] On the 20th at 2 p.m., Daegu City will sign a business agreement at the city hall annex with local robot companies and related industries such as parts, materials, software (SW), and system integration (SI) to establish a robot-related industrial ecosystem.

The signing ceremony will be attended by 20 people, including Mayor Kwon Young-jin, Kim Hak-do, President of the Small and Medium Business Corporation, Son Woong-hee, President of the Korea Institute for Robot Industry Advancement, and Kim Chang-ho, Chairman of the Daegyeong Robot Enterprise Promotion Association.

Daegu City, which is promoting the 5G-based advanced manufacturing robot demonstration infrastructure project, plans to actively discover policies to foster the growth of upstream and downstream related industries such as machinery and parts, which are the foundation of the robot industry, through this agreement, thereby promoting the scale-up of the local robot industry.

Through this agreement, the Small and Medium Business Corporation will operate a dedicated policy fund of 20 billion KRW for local robot companies and utilize other corporate support policy funds to support the biggest difficulties faced by local robot companies, such as funding for new technology development, production facility installation, startups, and business transformation.

The Korea Institute for Robot Industry Advancement will also provide opportunities for technical advice and on-site technical support consulting to solve technical difficulties in the field by utilizing its equipment. The Daegyeong Robot Enterprise Promotion Association will play a central role in actively promoting and linking support projects of corporate support institutions to facilitate industry conversion of local companies and attract robot companies from outside the region.

Daegu City has implemented strong robot industry promotion policies, including attracting the Korea Institute for Robot Industry Advancement (July 2010), establishing a robot industry cluster (June 2017), building the Global Robot Cluster (GRC) (November 2018), and projects to create robot markets and strengthen parts competitiveness (2015?2019). As a result, it has grown to be the number one non-capital region in the domestic robot industry sector.

Mayor Kwon Young-jin of Daegu said, "With the recent spread of the non-face-to-face economy due to COVID-19, the robot industry is expected to develop diversely," and added, "I hope this agreement will be a stepping stone for the growth of the local robot industry and that Daegu will stand tall as a leading city in the robot industry."