4 out of 10 firms in Korea experience raw material price hikes higher than 20%
A Shopper selects cooking oil at a supermarket in Seoul, June 22. Yonhap
Four out of 10 companies in Korea saw their raw material prices jump 20 percent or more this year amid fast-rising oil and commodity costs, a central bank survey showed Monday.
According to the survey by the Bank of Korea on 570 firms, 40.3 percent reported the hikes, with 8.1 percent saying that prices jumped 50 percent or more compared with a year earlier.
With the raw material price increase, 69 percent of those surveyed raised the prices of their products or services. Of them, 43.1 percent said their price hikes remained below 20 percent from 2021.
Of the firms that have yet to raise prices, 53 percent said that they plan to hike product prices within this year to reflect mounting bills from materials, the survey showed.
The survey comes as Korea is grappling with high inflation amid global oil and commodity price hikes driven by rebounding demand, pandemic-caused lockdowns in China and supply-chain disruptions caused by the war in Ukraine.
Concerns are growing that inflationary pressure could mount further as companies are rushing to transfer the fast-rising costs of raw materials into the prices of their products and services.
In May, the country's consumer prices jumped 5.4 percent year-on-year, the fastest rise in almost 14 years. (Yonhap)