Korea: Forward-looking business confidence improves for May

The Bank of Korea’s forward-looking business confidence indicator (BSI) for the manufacturing sector rose to 81 points for May from 78 points for April. Despite the improvement, the indicator remained below the 100-point threshold for May, signaling another month of pessimism among Korean manufacturers.

The indicator components showed that, for May, businesses reported higher sales expectations than they did for April, which underlined the improvement in overall sentiment. However, weighing on confidence for May was increased pessimism regarding raw material purchase prices, sales prices and profitability.

Confidence among non-manufacturing businesses—the mainstay of the Korean economy—increased to 81 points for May, up from 80 points for April.

Korea Fixed Investment Forecast

FocusEconomics Consensus Forecast panelists expect fixed investment to expand 2.7% in 2018, which is up 0.1 percentage points from last month’s forecast. In 2019, the panel expects fixed investment to grow 2.8%.