Pandemic pushes South Korea into recession as GDP contracts 3.3pct in Q2
South Korea’s economy recorded its first technical recession since 2003 in the June quarter, as health restrictions from the coronavirus pandemic hammered economic activities and global demand.
Gross domestic product (GDP) decreased by a seasonally adjusted 3.3 percent in the June quarter, the central bank said on Thursday, after declining 1.3 percent in the previous quarter and much worse than a 2.3 percent contraction seen in a Reuters poll...
South Korea’s economy recorded its first technical recession since 2003 in the June quarter, as health restrictions from the coronavirus pandemic hammered economic activities and global demand.
Gross domestic product (GDP) decreased by a seasonally adjusted 3.3 percent in the June quarter, the central bank said on Thursday, after declining 1.3 percent in the previous quarter and much worse than a 2.3 percent contraction seen in a Reuters poll.
Exports of goods and services from the trade-reliant economy plunged 16.6 percent, logging the worst reading since the final quarter of 1963. That made up nearly 40 percent of the nation’s nominal GDP last year.
Private consumption, which generates nearly half of the country’s GDP, however, rose 1.4 percent quarter-on-quarter, picking up from 6.5 percent decrease in the March quarter.
From a year earlier, the economy, Asia’s fourth-largest, shrank by 2.9 percent in the April-June period, sharply reversing a 1.4 percent expansion seen three months earlier and steeper than a two percent decline predicted in the poll.
- Reuters
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