SEOUL, Aug 4 (Reuters) – Board members of South Korea’s central bank said they would carefully determine the timing and pace of any further \u200cpolicy tightening, with some suggesting preemptive action, when they raised interest \u200crates at their last meeting on July 16 to control inflation, the minutes showed on Tuesday. <\/p>\n
The \u200bBank of Korea’s seven-member monetary policy board decided unanimously to raise interest rates last month for the first time in 3-1\/2 years and flagged more to come, as brisk growth in Asia’s fourth-largest economy fanned inflation risks. <\/p>\n
One member assessed that “the current rate \u200cincrease alone was unlikely \u2060to be sufficient to bring inflation back to target and that the Base Rate would therefore need to be raised further \u2060in line with the projected paths for growth and inflation,” according to the minutes. <\/p>\n
“The pace of further rate increases should be determined by reassessing the projected paths and \u200bthe magnitude \u200bof the associated risks as new information \u200bbecame available, while weighing the \u200cbenefits and costs of a more pre-emptive approach against those of a more gradual approach,” the member said. <\/p>\n
Another member also said primary emphasis should be on inflation, while emphasising preemptive monetary policy action was needed to consolidate the trend toward price stability. <\/p>\n
Earlier in the day, data showed South Korea’s consumer inflation softened to \u200ca three-month low in July, coming in below \u200bmarket expectations on a fall in oil prices, \u200bthough policymakers remained wary of \u200bupward pressures and markets did not rule out a possible \u200cback-to-back rate hike this month. <\/p>\n
Among other factors \u200bto be carefully \u200bassessed, board members noted upside inflation pressure stemming from both cost and demand sides, improvements in economic activity, as well as foreign exchange rates \u200band household debt. <\/p>\n
They also mentioned \u200cenergy supply chains, domestic spillover effects of a boom in chip \u200bexports and increased liquidity flowing into asset markets. <\/p>\n
(Reporting by Jihoon Lee; \u200bEditing by Christian Schmollinger and Kate Mayberry) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEOUL, Aug 4 (Reuters) – Board members of South Korea’s central bank said they would carefully determine the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[456],"tags":[845,60053,846,1615,60054,3913,3657,33],"class_list":["post-116568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bank-of-korea","tag-bank-of-korea","tag-board-members","tag-bok","tag-central-bank","tag-control-inflation","tag-interest-rates","tag-monetary-policy","tag-south-korea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}