{"id":22040,"date":"2023-04-25T01:56:29","date_gmt":"2023-04-25T01:56:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/south-korea-economy-averts\/"},"modified":"2023-04-25T01:58:11","modified_gmt":"2023-04-25T01:58:11","slug":"south-korea-economy-averts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/south-korea-economy-averts\/","title":{"rendered":"South Korea economy averts recession but faces tough headwinds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Choonsik Yoo and Jihoon Lee<\/p>\n<p>SEOUL (Reuters) -South Korea&#8217;s heavily trade-reliant economy barely averted a recession posting slim growth in the first quarter, but the outlook remained clouded by weak exports due to a cooling global economy, even with China&#8217;s reopening.<\/p>\n<p>South Korea&#8217;s gross domestic product (GDP) in the first quarter expanded by 0.3% over the previous three-month period, official advance estimates showed on Tuesday, compared with a median 0.2% rise tipped in a Reuters survey.<\/p>\n<p>Still, economists saw it as little more than a technical rebound after a 0.4% contraction during the final quarter of 2022, which was the first decline in 2-1\/2 years, and reinforced their view that the central bank&#8217;s tightening cycle is over.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t see any sign of strength from the detailed figures about the future path of the economy,&#8221; said Oh Suk-tae, economist at Societe Generale Securities in Seoul, adding he retains his forecast for 0.8% growth for the whole year.<\/p>\n<p>The biggest contributor to GDP during the first quarter was private consumption, posting growth of 0.5%, while capital investment dented economic growth, dropping 4.0%. Exports rose 3.8%, while imports grew 3.5%.<\/p>\n<p>There is high uncertainty both externally and internally, but a recovery in the IT sector and the Chinese economy is likely to stoke a rebound in the second half of the year, a central bank official said at a media briefing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Bank of Korea said earlier this month that this year&#8217;s economic growth would be weaker than its earlier projection of 1.6%, as the central bank left interest rates steady for the second consecutive meeting in a row.<\/p>\n<p>Economists now expect the Bank of Korea not to hike interest rates further after having raised them by 300 basis points since late 2021.    <\/p>\n<p>Over a year earlier, the country&#8217;s gross domestic product (GDP) expanded 0.8% during the January-March period, according to the Bank of Korea&#8217;s estimates, compared with gains of 1.3% in the prior quarter and 0.9% tipped in the survey.<\/p>\n<p> (Reporting by Jihoon Lee and Choonsik Yoo; Editing by Sonali Paul)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/south-korea-economy-averts\/a-woman-shops-at-a-market-in-seoul\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportBusinessNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3N0SV-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3N0SV-VIEWIMAGE\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Choonsik Yoo and Jihoon Lee SEOUL (Reuters) -South Korea&#8217;s heavily trade-reliant economy barely averted a recession posting slim growth in the first quarter, but the outlook remained clouded by weak exports due to a cooling global economy, even with China&#8217;s reopening. South Korea&#8217;s gross domestic product (GDP) in the first quarter expanded by 0.3% [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":22041,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1213],"tags":[1223],"class_list":["post-22040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-business","tag-updated"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportBusinessNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3N0SV-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22040"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22126,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22040\/revisions\/22126"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}