April 26, 2024

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The Korean economy grew by a six-year low of 2.7 percent last year due to sluggish corporate investment, but its per capita income surpassed US$30,000 for the first time, preliminary data by the central bank showed on March 5.

The revised 2018 reading by the Bank of Korea is on par with its earlier estimate of 2.7 percent growth released in January.

But it is the slowest on-year gain since 2012, when the country pulled off 2.3 percent annual growth.

For the fourth quarter of 2018, the economy rose 1 percent from three months earlier, jumping from a 0.6 percent on-quarter gain in both the second and third quarters.

Meanwhile, Korea’s per capita gross national income, a gauge of the population‘s purchasing power, reached US$31,349 last year, up 2.5 percent from the US$29,745 tallied in 2017.

By Ram Garikipati and newswires (ram@heraldcorp.com)