SEOUL: South Korea’s economy posted the longest current surplus for 45 months in a row due to faster fall in imports than exports, keeping a so-called recession-type surplus trend, central bank data showed on Tuesday.
Current account surplus reached 9.40 billion U.S. dollars in November, up from a surplus of 9.12 billion dollars in October, according to the Bank of Korea (BOK). It marked the longest surplus for 45 straight months since March 2012.
During the January-November period, the surplus amounted to 97.99 billion dollars, boosting expectations to top 100 billion dollars for the whole year of 2015.
The longest surplus trend came from faster reduction in imports than exports. The import decline was attributable to lower oil prices and slowing facility investment, which may lead to the weakening of corporate competitiveness.
Trade surplus for goods amounted to 9.98 billion dollars in November.
Exports declined 11.8 percent from a year earlier to 43.43 billion dollars in November, and imports plunged 15.6 percent to 33.45 billion dollars.
