By Chung Joo-won

The ailing South Korean econo my grew 2.6 percent in 2015, the lowest in three years, largely due to slumping exports and manu-facturing, the Bank of Korea said Tuesday. The nation’s fourth-quarter gross domestic product rose 0.6 percent in the fourth quarter from the previous three months, according to the central bank’s preliminary report. “By spending indices, annual growth in export and intellectual property product investment slowed considerably, in contrast to accelerated growth in private consumption and construction investment and steady growth in facility investment,” BOK said in a press release. Korea’s gross domestic product growth marked 3.3 percent in 2014, 2.9 percent in 2013 and 2.3 percent in 2012. The annual export growth fell to 0.4 percent from the 2.8 percent in 2014 and 4.3 percent in 2013. Growth in intellectual property product investment fell to 1.4 percent, considerably lower than 4.6 percent in 2014 and 4.4 percent in 2013. Growth in private consumption and construction investmime 0. however. grew faster lost year. Private consumption grow 2.1 percent. up from the 1.8 percent of the previous year. Construction investments grew 4.0 percent, a large leap from the 0.6 percent growth from a year ago. By economic activities, growth in manufacturing also slipped from 4 percent to 1.4 percent and service from 3.1 percent to 2.8 percent. Growth in the agriculture and fishing sector swung to minus 0.6 percent from 2.6 percent the previous year. The country’s real grass domes-tic income. a gauge for economic

activity based on income, grew 6.4 percent, by far surpassing GDP growth, largely as record-low glo-bal oil prices led to improvements in conditions for trade. In the same report, the BOK tallied the fourth quarterly growth in the October-December period at 0.6 percent, consider-ably lower than the 1.3 percent a quarter earlier. “Private consumption growth accelerated and export growth swung hack to positive, and yet the considerable (6.1 percent) fall in construction investments pulled down the overall quarterly growth;’ BOK said. In the fourth quarter, construc-tion invent Men IS plummeted to minus 0.1 percent on-quarter from 5.0 portent. Facility An vire, • merit won halved to 0.44 pen on-quarter &tun 1.8 percent. During the same period. pri-vate consumption grew l.r, per-cent from a quarter ago. Export grew 2.1 percent from minus 0.6 percent and import grew 2.8 per-cent. The report came after the cen-tral bank on Dec. 14 slashed its growth outlook for 2016 to 3 per-cent from 3.2 percent, citing soar-ing household debt, volatility in the China market and low crude oil prices. (joowonertitheraldtorp.com)

Source  The Korea Herald Newspaper, January 27, 2016