In its penultimate meeting of the year, South Korea's central bank has left its key rate unchanged... while revising down its earlier growth forecast to two-point-seven percent for 2018 due to rising economic uncertainties at home and abroad.
Here's our Kim Hye-sung with more.
The Bank of Korea has kept its benchmark interest rate unchanged at one-point-five percent for October.
This marks the seventh rate freeze this year... after the Bank raised its key rate for the first time in over six years last November.
The decision comes despite the widening U.S.-Korea rate gap, which increased to 75 basis points last month on the Fed's monetary tightening...and the soaring property prices and growing household debt in Korea, which reached 1-point-three trillion U.S. dollars, and is only slightly less than the country's GDP.
The central bank cited concerns over the sluggish domestic labor market, relatively low inflation and the escalating trade war between the U.S. and China for its rate decision this month.
The number of newly added jobs in the country fell below the 100-thousand mark for the third consecutive month in September.
South Korea's consumer price index gained one-point-nine percent on-year in September, higher than the one-point-four percent the previous month, but it remains below the central bank's two percent target.
Core inflation, which excludes energy and food prices, remains low at one percent.
The BOK added that trade friction between Washington and Beijing, Korea's top two trading partners, is adding extra uncertainty to its export-dependent economy.
Kim Hyesung, Arirang News.