ARIRANG NEWS 16:00 Good to have you with us. This is Arirang News. Live from Seoul, I′m Laah Hyun-kyung. Title: Korea posts record current account surplus in 2014 We begin with a record high current account surplus. Korea′s central bank says it hit an all-time high last year. However,... there are concerns that this surplus trend may be slowing... mostly due to sluggish domestic demand. Hwang Ji-hye explains. Korea′s current account surplus set a new all-time high in 2014. The Bank of Korea says... the amount totaled over 89 billion U.S. dollars,... up more than 10 percent from the previous record surplus posted a year earlier. The amount, however,... falls slightly short of the central bank′s forecast that was made last month... of 90 billion dollars. The balance of goods last year... rose to 92-point-8 billion... as exports went up half-a-percent in 2014 from the previous year,... while imports dropped one-point-three percent. The pace of export growth in goods... was the slowest... since the height of the global financial crisis in 2009. Exports, then, dropped almost 16 percent. Now slowing exports... coupled with a drop in imports is pointing to a current account surplus trend that mainly stems from sluggish domestic demand. A report by the Korea International Trade Association also shows the country′s exports continue to contribute less and less to economic growth. The rate of contribution to growth... of Korea′s traditional growth engine exports... stood at 37-point-7 percent in 2013, down from 51 percent posted a year earlier. The figure also marks the lowest since 2008... when it fell to slightly over 20 percent. The deficit of the services account, which includes spending by Koreans overseas,... stood at more than eight billion dollars in 2014,... expanding from a six-and-a-half billion dollar deficit recorded a year earlier. Hwang Ji-hye, Arirang News. Title: Korea′s M&A; market hits all-time high in 2014 And here′s another all-time high record. The size of Korea′s merger and acquisition market set a new record last year a four-fold jump from the year 2011. And with the government easing regulations this year… analysts expect the market to grow even further. For this story,… here′s Kim Min-ji. Mergers and acquisitions by Korean companies hit a record-high last year. Korean companies carried out M&A; deals totaling almost 80 billion U.S. dollars in 2014, nearly double from a year earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and the Korea Capital Market Institute. Although the number of deals struck declined,... big deals boosted the figures. To name a few,... Samsung Group inked a deal to sell its chemical and defensive affiliates to Hanhwa Group as part of its restructuring,.... and there was the merger of Daum Communications and Kakao Corporation two of the nation′s biggest IT firms. The domestic growth is in line with the global trend. The global M&A; market reached three-point-eight trillion dol

• published: 02 Feb 2015
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