Consumer sentiment recovers

The economy is apparently bottoming out as the slowing production growth rate stabilized and consumer sentiment showed signs of recovery in March, officials of the National Statistical Office (NSO) said Thursday.

According to statistics compiled by the NSO, the composite index for future business trends, which shows economic prospects, rose for the second consecutive month in March, raising hopes that the Korean economy will recover soon. However, a full-scale economic recovery is expected to take a considerable amount of time as facility investments continued to fall amid sluggish domestic consumption last month, the officials said.

The NSO statistics showed that the leading business index marked a similar growth rate in March to that in February as the slow down in the production growth rate since the fourth quarter of last year stabilized and consumer sentiment showed signs of recovery last month.

Production increased by 6.2 percent in March compared with the same month of last year thanks to a recovery in the production of personal computers and steady growth in production of semiconductors and other transportation equipment.