South Korea’s credit agency commits $2bn to Adnoc

South Korea’s export credit agency has committed $2 billion in financing to the state-backed Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc).

The funding is to improve the competitiveness of Korean companies in project bidding and to help secure orders for Korean businesses, Business Korea newspaper reported, quoting a Korea Trade Insurance (K-Sure) statement.

The support is a follow-up measure to the cooperation agreement signed between K-Sure and Adnoc during President Lee Jae Myung’s state visit to the UAE last month.  

The UAE is Korea’s third-largest crude oil supplier after Saudi Arabia and the United States, with imports of $12 billion in 2024, the newspaper said.

Chang Young-jin, president of K-Sure, said the agency will continue to identify creditworthy importers with the intention of issuing project orders to Korean companies and purchasing Korean products.

Further reading:

• UAE pledges to invest $30bn in South Korea
• South Korea to join UAE’s Stargate AI data centre project
• Visits by Canada and South Korea show the UAE is not all about the superpowers

Last month Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi, UAE minister of foreign trade, said that the comprehensive economic partnership agreement between the UAE and South Korea has entered its final stages ahead of its entry into force by the end of this year.

Non-oil trade between the two countries was $6.6 billion in 2024, up by more than 11 percent year on year, while total trade was $3 billion during the first half of 2025, the minister said.

In 2023 the UAE announced that its sovereign investment funds would invest $30 billion in strategic sectors in Korea.