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S. Korea's foreign debt soundness improves in 2015

SEOUL
2016-02-25 13:24

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South Korea's foreign debts soundness improved last year due to rising external credit and falling debt that resulted in a growth in net external credit, central bank data showed Thursday.

External credit, which gauges foreign currency South Korean players should receive, reached 719.7 billion U.S. dollars as of end-2015, up 36.2 billion dollars from a year earlier, according to the Bank of Korea (BOK). Foreign debts, which South Korean players should repay, declined 27.8 billion dollars from a year earlier to 396.6 billion dollars at the end of last year.

Net external credit amounted to 323.1 billion dollars as of end-2015, up 64 billion dollars from a year ago, enhancing the country's soundness in foreign currency liability. Foreign debts with a maturity of less than a year, which have a high risk of abrupt outflow in times of a financial crisis, declined 7.7 billion dollars to 108.7 billion dollars in 2015.

The ratio of short-term foreign debts to foreign currency reserves stood at 29.6 percent as of end-2015, down 2.5 percentage points from a year earlier, bolstering up a healthy foreign currency balance.

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