The government will work to foster 500 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with an annual export capacity of over $10 million by 2030 as part of efforts to promote exports of smaller firms, the industry ministry said Friday. Last year, Korea's exports exceeded $700 billion for the first time, but the top 1 percent of export firms, or those with over $50 million in annual export volume, accounted for some 84 percent of the country's total exports. SMEs only accounted for 8 percent of the total. Through the project, the country will work to lessen its dependence on only a handful of conglomerates, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources said. To this end, five trade promotion agencies, including the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA), the Korea Trade Insurance and the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology, have signed a joint memorandum of understanding (MOU) to provide marketing, certification, finance and consulting support to small export firms, according to the ministry. Under the MOU, SMEs selected as firms with export potential in the consumer goods, a