BOK freezes key rate at record low for 7th straight month

In a widely anticipated move, the country's central bank kept its key rate frozen at a record low 1.5 percent for January on Thursday, extending its wait-and-see mode for another month ahead of another U.S. rate hike in the near future.
  
The Bank of Korea (BOK) has stood pat on its policy rate since July after four rate cuts in less than a year to help bolster growth in Asia's fourth-largest economy.
  
Thursday's decision follows a U.S. rate hike in December, the first of its kind in nearly a decade.
  
The U.S. rate hike is well expected to prompt an outflow of foreign capital from emerging market countries, including South Korea. Foreign investors have remained net sellers of South Korean shares since Dec. 2.
  
The U.S. Federal Reserve has said it will continue to raise its key interest rate though the rate of the increase will be gradual.

The U.S. Fed is set to hold another rate-setting meeting later in the month and again in March.
  
Still, BOK Gov. Lee Ju-yeol has said the BOK will maintain its monetary easing stance at least for some time, citing sluggish economic growth and exports.
  
South Korea's exports dipped every single month in 2015 while an earlier report from the central bank said the country's growth potential has further slipped to the low 3-percent range for the
2015-2018 period from the mid 3-percent range in the 2011-2014 period.
  
The BOK is set to release its latest outlook on economic growth later in the day. In its last quarterly revision, released October, the central bank slashed its growth outlook for 2016 to 3.2 percent from 3.3 percent.
  
Meanwhile, the BOK's decision to freeze its key rate is in line with an earlier poll by Yonhap Infomax, the financial news arm of Yonhap News Agency, in which 15 out of 17 economists surveyed projected a rate freeze for January. (Yonhap)