Korea’s exports continued to rally in June, increasing over 5-percent, bolstered by record-high semiconductor shipments.
Ahn Sung-jin has the latest.
Amid robust performance in the semiconductor sector, South Korea is continuing to see on-year growth for exports.
According to the Trade Ministry on Monday, exports for June increased by 5.1 percent compared to the year before, reaching 57 billion U.S. dollars.
That’s the ninth straight month for on-year growth to be recorded.
It’s largely attributed to a strong performance by the chip industry, with the country’s largest export item seeing a record-high figure of 13.4 billion dollars, up more than 50 percent on-year.
Higher memory chip prices and demand from server-centered industries pulled up the growth.
“The chip sector’s performance for the first half of the year saw an increase of almost 90 percent in memory chip exports. Prices and volume both went up.”
All 4 IT products out of 15 major export items, which also includes displays and computers, saw an on-year rise.
Exports of petroleum products and automobiles are also continuing to see stable performance.
Outbound shipments to the United States and India reached a record-high for any June, while exports to China also showed on-year growth for the 4th straight month.
Exports to the ASEAN and Middle Eastern region rose as well.
With strong exports, the country’s trade balance stayed firmly in the positive territory, logging an 8 billion dollar surplus compared to the year before.
This is the largest trade balance since September 2020.
On the back of continuing positive monthly exports, outbound shipments for the first half of 2024 also rose by nearly 10 percent.
This led to the country’s largest ever trade balance for the first of any year totaling 23-point-1 billion dollars.
Robust exports of hybrid vehicles, also pushed auto exports to a record-high figure for the same period.
The government pledged further strong export date for the second half of the year.
“Exports are normally greater at the end of the year than in the first half, and for this year, in the case of semiconductors, we can forecast a strong first half and a strong second half as well. We believe our exports will be quite good.”
It also said it would respond to risk factors and continuously monitor export circumstances to reduce negative external factors.
Ahn Sung-jin, Arirang News.
Source : Arirang TV, https://www.arirang.com/news/view?id=272639
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