Businesses in Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Port Moody are uniquely poised to take advantage of a free trade agreement with South Korea, says the new president of the Tri-Cities Chamber of Commerce.
Rick Pasin said the chamber is working with Senator Yonah Martin and members of the South Korean immigrant community to strengthen ties with the Asian country and increase opportunities for business development afforded with the new agreement.
"We are looking at creating and using this task force to engage not only our members and their members but to create a stronger economy for the region," Pasin said.
The task force met twice in 2014 since the joint declaration was signed in September between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Korean President Park Geun-hye and more meetings are planned for 2015.
According to Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada, the agreement could boost the country's economy by $1.7 billion and Pasin thinks the Tri-Cities could benefit because there are so many South Korean immigrants who live here or who have started businesses here.
He said the task force is part of the chamber's effort to reach out to business people in the Tri-Cities immigrant community, including the Chinese and Iranian communities, who form a small but growing contingent of the chamber's membership.
Another key chamber initiative for 2015 will be support of the Metro Vancouver mayors' congestion improvement tax referendum to pay for a $7.5-billion transportation plan with a regional 0.5% PST increase.
Pasin said the chamber is a member of the Better Transit and Transportation Coalition, which also includes the Vancouver Board of Trade, the Downtown Surrey Business Improvement Association, the David Suzuki Foundation, the BC Chamber of Commerce and more.
Business owners see congestion as an impediment to business and believe the so-called congestion improvement tax will bring much needed buses to Burke Mountain as well as improvements to the B-line bus, and possibly even a rapid bus system to connect the Tri-Cities to other cities in the region.
"The whole idea is to cut congestion and increase our capacity for goods movement," Pasin said.
Pasin is also bullish on the local economy for 2015 and is looking forward to a good year for the chamber and Tri-Cities business. Among the upcoming initiatives is a trade show for business that is in the planning stage for 2015.
The Tri-Cities chamber is closing in on 1,000 members (it currently has 924) and its website (www.tricitieschamber.com) gets 11,000 hits per month.
