Bank of Korea governor Lee Ju-yeol comments after the central bank's meeting
- Bank of Korea held rates steady at 1.50% earlier
- Says that decision today was unanimous
- FX rate is to be determined by market
- Stronger KRW could reduce room for policy rate increase
- CPI to rise to 1.6% in 2018
- GDP to rise to 3.0% in 2018
- Expects inflation to gradually rise
The Bank of Korea announced its monetary policy decision for this month where they kept rates steady at 1.50%. But they trimmed their inflation forecast to 1.6% from the previous 1.7% projection.
They've been having troubles with balancing a strengthening currency and inflation for quite a while now, which is the reason why they've been so active in talking down the Korean won this year.
Anyway, South Korea was previously put under the "Monitoring List" by the US Treasury in its semi-annual FX report. And they are quite keen to avoid being "upgraded" to being a FX manipulator when the report is expected to be out some time this month.
