South Korea posted a current account surplus for the 22nd month in December, but
the surplus narrowed from the previous month as the service account turned
negative due to tourism-related shortfalls, the central bank said
Monday.
The current account surplus reached US$3.96 billion in
December, down from a revised $4.56 billion in the previous month, according to
a provisional report by the Bank of Korea (BOK). The current account is the
broadest measure of cross-border trade.
The current account remained
in the black for the 22nd straight month on the back of robust exports, which
account for about 50 percent of the Korean economy.
For the whole year
of 2011, South Korea posted a current account surplus of $27.65 billion, down
from $29.39 billion the previous year and marking the lowest since $3.19 billion
tallied in 2008 after the global financial crisis.
South Korea's goods
balance posted surplus of $3.85 billion in December, down from a revised $4
billion one month earlier. For 2011, the goods balance surplus narrowed to $32.1
billion.
The country's goods account has stayed in the black since
January of 2009 despite worries that the public debt crisis in Europe may dampen
its exports, as an increase in overseas shipments of steel and auto products
offset declining sales of mobile devices and display panels, the BOK
said.
Asia's fourth-largest economy posted a 10.8 percent on-month
increase in customs-cleared exports in December as demand from the Middle East
and Japan surged, outweighing the widened export decline to the eurozone
countries, the central bank said.
For the whole year of 2011, South
Korea's exports grew 19.3 percent from 2010 on a customs clearance
basis.
The service account, which includes expenditures by South
Koreans on overseas trips and studying abroad, swung into the red in December
with a deficit of $205.2 million due to widened losses in travel and other
business accounts.
The financial account, covering cross-border
investments, posted a new outflow of $4.15 billion in December, narrowing from a
revised net outflow of $6.29 billion in November.
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