South Korea’s economic growth fell short of the central bank’s estimates as the nation’s private consumption and construction industries took a turn for the worse.
Korea’s real GDP (gross domestic product) made a 3.6 percent year-on-year growth, said the Bank of Korea (BOK) report Thursday on the fourth quarter (Q4) GDP and yearly GDP for 2011. Last year’s annual growth was the lowest after 2009’s 0.3 percent crawl and 0.2 percentage points short of the central bank’s earlier estimate in December last year (3.8 percent).
More specifically, exports grew 10.0 percent while private consumption and facilities investments made slow progress at 2.2 percent and 3.8 percent each. Investments in the construction sector posted the only negative growth at -6.5 percent.
Sector-wise, the manufacturing industries saw a 7.1 percent rise while the service sector witnessed a moderate 2.6 percent hike. The construction sector saw negative growth at -5.6 percent.
Meanwhile, the quarterly statistics for Q4 showed a 0.4 percent growth on-quarter and 3.4 percent growth on-year. Q4 saw negative growth in all categories but inventories (0.6 percent), which includes private consumption (-0.4 percent), government spending (-1.7 percent), facilities investment (-5.2 percent), constructions investment (-0.3 percent), exports (-1.5 percent), and imports (-3.1 percent).
[Written by Ik-ho Choi - Samji Chung / edited by Soyoung Chung]
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