As all of you are aware, the Bank of Korea decided to maintain the Base Rate at 2.25% in August. Ahead of this, on June 24 this year, it cut down the Aggregate Credit Ceiling for the third quarter this year by 1.5 trillion won. This had been increased in two steps by 3.5 trillion won to 10 trillion won following Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy.
In this way Korea has joined the ranks of those countries around the world that have raised interest rates along with Canada, Australia, Norway and Sweden and so on. In fact the IMF and the OECD had advised a preemptive hike of interest rate for Korea in order to counter upward price pressures.