South Korea and Mexico have agreed to launch a committee to beef up bilateral economic cooperation, the finance ministry said Monday.

The agreement was reached in Brazil on Sunday (local time) between Finance Minister Hyun Oh-seok and his Mexican counterpart, Luis Videgaray. They were attending an annual meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank.

The so-called economic cooperation committee will be launched in the second half of this year at the earliest and take comprehensive government-level cooperation measures, the ministry said.

The ministry said that both shared the need to set up the committee in order to effectively coordinate cooperation at a time when bilateral trade and investment continue to expand.

Mexico is the second-largest market in Latin America following Brazil. Trade between South Korea and Mexico reached $11.5 billion in 2012.

South Korea is expected to seek cooperation to help its companies participate in the Mexican government-led projects in oil, transportation, communications and other infrastructure construction.

It will also likely push to expand investment and trade with Mexico in the electronics, steel, automobile and IT areas.

"Since Latin American markets, including Mexico, have an ample amount of natural resources with a high potential for investment, they are the areas that we need to pay more attention to in order to make a quantum jump in our economy down the road," Hyun said.

"Through the economic cooperation committee with Mexico, we expect to achieve a win-win by capitalizing on the merits of both countries." (Yonhap)