SEOUL, July 18 (Korea Bizwire) — Consumers struggling with surging prices are increasingly limiting their purchases of products other than essential goods like food. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy reported that last month’s offline retailer sales went up by 10.1 percent, while sales in the home appliances and culture sectors dropped by 9.7 [...]
SEOUL, July 18 (Korea Bizwire) — South Koreans’ transactions of foreign stocks fell sharply in the first half of the year from six months earlier on bearish overseas equity markets, with their bond trading edging up, data showed Monday. Local investors’ transactions of overseas shares were valued at US$167.99 billion in the January-June period, down [...]
SEOUL, July 17 (Korea Bizwire) — The government and the ruling party on Sunday agreed to allow low-priced home owners to replace their floating rate-based borrowing with fixed ones as part of efforts to help ease their financial burden amid fast-rising borrowing costs. The decision was made at a policy consultation meeting between the government [...]
BALI/SEOUL, July 17 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea will push to exempt taxes on interest income and capital gains from foreigners’ investment in government bonds and monetary stabilization bonds in a bid to help stabilize the debt market, the finance minister has said. Finance Minister Choo Kyung-ho made the remarks on the details of the [...]
SEOUL, July 15 (Korea Bizwire) – Foreign direct investment (FDI) pledges to South Korea fell 15.6 percent in the first half of this year from a year earlier amid global uncertainties caused by the prolonged crisis surrounding Ukraine and surging inflation, the industry ministry said Friday. The country received US$11.09 billion worth of FDI commitments [...]
SEOUL, July 15 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea said Friday it aims to provide policy financing worth 68.3 trillion won (US$51.4 billion) this year to small merchants and other vulnerable people in a bid to help ease the burden of rising borrowing costs. The move is a follow-up to the 125 trillion-won measure that was [...]
SEOUL, July 15 (Korea Bizwire) — The value of loans issued to young South Koreans from the non-banking financial sector is on the rise, with some being pushed into declaring bankruptcy. Rep. Jin Sun-mee of the Democratic Party shared a report from the Financial Supervisory Service that showed young South Koreans under the age of [...]
SEOUL, July 15 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean builder SK ecoplant Co. said Thursday it was launching a drive to recycle waste incineration ash as a construction material. The company joined hands with CMD Group, a specialist in the manufacturing of eco-friendly construction materials, to promote technological cooperation and to produce block aggregates made of [...]
SEOUL, July 14 (Korea Bizwire) — A local court on Thursday ruled in favor of the comprehensive real estate holding tax, a controversial additional tax burden imposed on expensive house owners. The Seoul Administrative Court rejected two lawsuits filed separately by two Seoul residents demanding that comprehensive real estate holding taxes levied on their respective [...]
SEOUL, July 14 (Korea Bizwire) — President Yoon Suk-yeol instructed officials Thursday to find ways to protect ordinary citizens from the financial pressures of high inflation and high interest rates. Yoon made the remark a day after the Bank of Korea delivered an unprecedented 0.5 percentage-point rate hike in a preemptive bid to fight fast-growing [...]