South Korea's official development assistance operator KOICA said Tuesday that it will strengthen partnership with the private sector to boost financing for its development aid programs for emerging countries.

"The international community is putting emphasis on partnership with the private sector as a means of procuring financial sources for the development (of needy countries)," said Kim In-sik, president of the Korea International Cooperation Agency, better known as KOICA.

Despite decades of past international development assistance programs, the majority of emerging economies are mired in poverty, Kim said, adding that the current format of inter-governmental development assistance has shown its limits.

KOICA will actively seek partnerships with private companies to raise development assistance funds so that it could better contribute to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, a set of 17 global development goals which went into effect in 2015.

The ODA agency cited several on-going programs as examples of the government-private sector partnership.

KOICA and local entertainment and food service giant CJ Group are currently carrying out a 2.29 billion won (US$1.9 million) project to build up Vietnam's agricultural sector while the agency is running an education center for car mechanics in Ethiopia in partnership with KIA Motors to help with local vocational education.

For 2017, South Korea has earmarked 2.64 trillion won for its ODA budget, up about 8 percent from last year's 2.44 trillion won.

KOICA is in charge of executing 630.4 billion won of the total.

Separately, the ODA agency said it kicked off an assistance program to build a media center inside the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania.

South Korea will inject $1.5 million for the project aimed at constructing exhibition and media halls where videos and photos promoting Tanzanian national parks will be displayed. The construction is scheduled to be completed in March next year, according to KOICA. (Yonhap)