Bank of Korea Cuts Base Rate By 50 Basis Points

January 9, 2009

A fifth rate cut since October 9th has been engineered. It’s 50-basis point size met expectations and brought the cumulative drop to 275 basis points. In a statement released by monetary officials, rapidly declining growth on all fronts, a continuing credit crunch, and a likely continuing drop in goods and real estate prices were cited for today’s action. Fund-raising difficulties for corporations were also mentioned in a statement that left open the option of further easing “to improve liquidity conditions and to ward off the risk of a severe slowdown in economic activity.”

After the central bank announcement, producer price data were released, showing a 1.7% drop in December on top of a 2.3% decline in November. On-year PPI inflation fell to a ten-month low of 5.6% from 7.8% in November and 11.3% in the year to September.

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 9th, 2009 at 3:27 am and is filed under Central Bank Watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “Bank of Korea Cuts Base Rate By 50 Basis Points”

  1. Johan Chen says:
    January 25, 2009 at 5:53 am

    truly enjoyed bumping into your blog post, keep up the good job!!

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