S. Korea Growth Outlook Steady

The International Monetary Fund kept South Korea’s economic growth forecast for this year and next year unchanged in its latest quarterly economic outlook, the country’s finance ministry here said Tuesday, Yonhap reported. The agency earlier anticipated that Asia’s fourth-largest economy will expand 2.7% in 2016 and 3% in 2017, and it held the rates steady in its latest World Economic Outlook released globally, according to the Ministry of Strategy and Finance. It is slightly lower than the South Korean government’s growth target of 2.8%. But a rapidly aging population and heavy export reliance will weigh heavily on the economy amid a slowdown in world trade.