South Korea’s central bank on Thursday left its benchmark policy rate steady at 1.5 percent as widely expected, amid growing concerns over the country’s bulky household debt.
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“For the passenger sector in the third quarter, we expect overseas demand to pick up, given the July-August peak season and the Korean Thanksgiving holiday in September as well as the de facto end of the MERS outbreak”, the company said in a press release.
The central bank in the Philippines will conclude its monetary policy meeting and then announce its decision on interest rates.
On a monthly basis, inflation added 0.2 percent – also matching forecasts and up from the flat reading in the previous month.
China’s devaluation of its yuan currency on Tuesday roiled financial markets and added to worries about the state of its cooling economy, South Korea’s largest export market.
In the first six months of the year, Korean Air’s sales stepped back 2.4 percent on-year to 5.66 trillion, whereas operating profit surged almost 133-fold to 187.3 billion won on the back of cheaper fuel prices.
“The Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of Korea decided today to leave the Base Rate unchanged at 1.50% for the intermeeting period”. Economic growth in emerging market countries including China has meanwhile continued to slow.
Globally, the disease carries a very high fatality rate of around 36 percent.
The bank will hold onto this wait-and-watch position for two months amid the expected rate hike in the US and the lingering effect from the outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), Xinhua reported.
Despite cuts in electricity fees, consumer price inflation registered 0.7% in July, the same as in June, in line mainly with expansions in the extents of increase in service prices.
“Unless we see drastic volatilities in the Chinese forex and equities markets, or the Chinese economy shows real signs of deeper troubles, another rate cut is probably not going to happen this year”, said Park Jong-yeon, a fixed-income analyst at NH Investment & Securities.
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“The committee will conduct monetary policy so as to maintain price stability over a medium-term horizon and pay attention to financial stability”, the bank said.
