Korea and Belgium will hold their first joint pharmaceutical conference in Brussel to seek growth opportunities in the sector, industry officials said.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Korean Embassy to Belgium and the European Union will host the event “Korea-Belgium Pharma-Bio Conference” at Le Chatelain Brussels Hotel on Nov. 8-9.

The Korea Pharmaceutical and Bio-Pharma Manufacturers Association (KPBMA), the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) in Brussels, and the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI) will co-organize the conference.

The event will be the first “Global Open Innovation” by the KPBMA. Organizers said that the conference would be meaningful in that Seoul is seeking cooperative measures with Brussels, which invests 30 percent of the nation’s research and development spending in supporting the pharmaceutical sector.

Belgium is one of the pharmaceutical superpowers that Korea is benchmarking.

About 5 percent of the global novel drugs come from Belgium. The country ranks second in the number of clinical trials in Europe. With well-established biotech clusters that connect between academia, business, and research, the nation is home to many R&D centers and subsidiaries of multinational pharmaceutical firms.

The Korean government aims to learn Belgium’s policies to nurture the pharmaceutical industry. Through the conference, the two countries will discover and share advanced pipelines and seek possibilities for joint research and investment cooperation. Companies from both countries will be able to search for business partners.

The KPBMA said it would visit Belgium as part of a delegation consisting of health officials, business executives, hospital officials, and investors.

The KPBMA is recruiting participating companies for the conference. Companies that wish to attend the event can submit applications to the KPBMA via the association’s website.