Asia Economics Update Korea's resilient growth warrants further policy tightening Korea's economy grew at a faster pace in Q1, broadly in line with expectations. Despite greater uncertainty about global demand, we think policy-makers are right to worry more about inflation than... 27th April 2011 · 1 min read
Asia Economics Update Korea’s monetary policy tightening has further to go The Bank of Korea (BoK) kept its base rate at 3.0% today, as expected. The strengthening won is doing some of the heavy-lifting in terms of policy tightening, but the central bank will not want to... 12th April 2011 · 1 min read
Asia Economics Update Asia's manufacturing growth slow Manufacturing PMIs for March, released overnight and today, remained buoyant for India, but declined in Korea, Taiwan and dropped even more sharply in Australia. New export orders accelerated for both... 1st April 2011 · 1 min read
Asia Economics Update Korea’s central bank has more work to do The Bank of Korea (BoK) lifted its policy rate by 25bp to 3.0% today, as was universally anticipated. Policymakers are rightly focused on tackling local price pressures, which are not solely due to... 10th March 2011 · 1 min read
Asia Economic Outlook Set for above-trend growth GDP growth across Emerging Asia has slowed, but is likely to pick up again soon. Domestic demand, trade between the emerging markets, as well as policy flexibility, will cushion the downside... 22nd February 2011 · 1 min read
Asia Economics Update Korea's central bank bides its time The Bank of Korea (BoK) unexpectedly held its policy rate at 2.75% today. Nonetheless, core inflation has surged and looks set to climb further while GDP growth should pick up too. The upshot is that... 11th February 2011 · 1 min read
Asia Economics Weekly Bank of Korea set to tighten again We expect Korea’s central bank to hike the base rate by 25bp for the second meeting in a row on Friday, which would take the policy rate to 3.0%. This is also the consensus view. Core inflation, which... 7th February 2011 · 1 min read
Asia Economics Update Korea's slowdown has probably bottomed out Today’s Q4 GDP data for Korea show that growth eased in q/q terms, as expected. The economy is likely to regain traction during the course of this year, while policymakers have rightly become more... 26th January 2011 · 1 min read
Asia Economics Update The Bank of Korea still has more work to do The Bank of Korea (BoK) lifted its policy rate by 25bp to 2.75% today, which was in line with our forecast but surprised the consensus. Policymakers have rightly become more focused on inflation and... 13th January 2011 · 1 min read
Asia Economics Weekly Bank of Korea set to hike policy rates again We expect Korea’s central bank to lift its policy rate by 25bp to 2.75% on Thursday. This is in contrast to the consensus view which forecasts no change. The worst of the slowdown looks to have come... 10th January 2011 · 1 min read
Asia Economics Update Korea-US trade deal good for both sides The amendments in the Korea-US free trade deal (KORUS) announced earlier this month have caused some protests in Korea, but the risk that the new arrangement is blocked by the National Assembly looks... 16th December 2010 · 1 min read
Asia Economics Update Further Bank of Korea tightening only a matter of time The Bank of Korea (BoK) held its policy rate at 2.5% today, as expected. Nonetheless, the economy should regain momentum during the course of next year while inflation is likely to trend higher. The... 9th December 2010 · 1 min read
Asia Economic Outlook Asia's slowdown to bottom soon (Q4 10) The post-recession rebound in most of Latin America is showing signs of slowing but growth is likely to remain fairly strong over the coming quarters. We still expect the region to expand by around 4... 1st December 2010 · 1 min read
Asia Economics Update More Bank of Korea rate hikes on the way The Bank of Korea (BoK) hiked its policy rate by 25bp to 2.5% today, in a move we had expected but which surprised the Bloomberg consensus. The economy should regain momentum over the next 12 months... 16th November 2010 · 1 min read
Asia Economics Weekly Korea's monetary tightening set to resume The Bank of Korea meets on Tuesday and, we judge, will probably lift its 7-day repo rate by 25bp to 2.5%. GDP growth has inevitably slowed given the tougher global environment but domestic demand is... 15th November 2010 · 1 min read
Asia Economics Update Korea's growth to be slower but better balanced Data published today show that Korea’s GDP growth slowed in Q3. The economy will stay on a slow track for some time and in 2011 overall now looks set to expand at a sub-trend pace. Nevertheless, the... 27th October 2010 · 1 min read
