SEOUL- South Korea’s economy likely grew faster in the December quarter than in the preceding period, helped by improved domestic consumption after fiscal and monetary stimulus, a Reuters poll showed on Monday.
Gross domestic product for the October-December period is expected to have expanded a seasonally adjusted 0.8 percent from the previous quarter, when it grew 0.4 percent, the median forecast from the survey of 14 economists showed.
“The high-frequency indicators including retail and property sales, consumer confidence and services output showed notable improvement in the fourth quarter, helped by the government’s and the central bank’s fiscal and monetary stimulus measures,” said Ma Tieying, economist at DBS.
With South Korea’s economy hit by a China slowdown and soft computer chip demand last year, the government responded with an extra $5 billion stimulus plan while the Bank of Korea (BOK) trimmed its policy interest rate twice in July and October.
From a year earlier, the economy, however, expanded 1.9 percent in the Christmas quarter, according to the same survey, slowing from 2.0 percent growth seen three months earlier.
Twenty four economists provided year-on-year growth estimates for the final quarter of the year.
“While facility and construction investments and goods exports likely continued to decline on-year, unstable global trade conditions and local property regulations may have also dented exports and investment growth,” said Ahn So-eun, economist at IBK Securities.
For the whole of 2019, 40 analysts predicted Asia’s fourth-largest economy would grow a median 1.9 percent, much slower than 2.7 percent growth in 2018. — Reuters
