[Monitor] South Korea’s debt-GDP ratio rises at 2nd-fastest pace

Household debt in South Korea equaled 95.1 percent of the country’s gross domestic product as of the third quarter last year, up 3.9 percentage points from a year earlier, data from the Institute of International Finance showed earlier this week. The debt-to-GDP ratio was growing at the second fastest pace among the surveyed 33 countries and eurozone, the data also showed.

Corporate debt totaled 101.6 percent of the GDP, rising by 6.3 percentage points from the previous year. It was the second largest increase after Brazil, with a 7.5 percentage point hike.

The government debt of Korea, meanwhile, showed slower growth, marking 40.2 percent as of the end of September, up 3.5 percentage points from a year ago, and lower than an increase of 10.1 percentage points for Britain.
(khnews@heraldcorp.com)