Current Account Surplus 1.1 Billion Dollars in March

With diminishing export decrease, current account surplus in March increased to 1 billion dollars after 9 months. According to `international account trend in March` that the Bank of Korea announced on the 26th, current account surplus in March increased to 1.09 billion dollars, which is 2.8 times more than 384 million dollars in February.

Sharp rise in the current account surplus was resulted from that export decrease rate marked only 5.7 percent from the same period last year with export increase by 2.3 billion dollars from February, and import also decreased by 1.44 billion dollars from February.

Chung Jung-Ho, director of the statistics department at BOK forecasted, “indexes show that export decrease hit the bottom in December last year. Exports in March increased by seasonal causes, but exports in April will continue the surplus in current account by around 10 percent in spite of worries of oil price and money exchange rate”

The current account surplus in the 1st quarter(January to March) decreased to 1.76 billion dollars from 2.77 billion dollars in the same period last year.

Goods account balance was surplus by 1.997 billion dollars, which is 3 times more from February, as exports recovered in Steel, Semiconductor, while import decreased in crude oil and capital goods. Especially, consumer products import marked 2 digit increase for 4 months in a row in TV sets, laundry machine, and golf goods.

Sang-Chul Kim sckim007@donga.com