Finance minister holds meeting to discuss economic risks at home and abroad
Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki holds an emergency meeting to discuss economic risk factors at home and abroad, March 22. Yonhap
Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki held an emergency meeting Tuesday to discuss economic risk factors at home and abroad, including growing inflationary pressure and global supply chain disruptions.
Hong met with ranking officials at the finance ministry to discuss ways to tackle the set of economic risks and how to respond to them amid concerns over stagflation ― a mix of slumping growth and high inflation.
The main agenda items of the meeting included the economic impact from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, trends in the foreign exchange market and ways to improve fiscal soundness, the ministry said.
Hong stressed the need to devise policies to prevent such risk factors from undermining economic growth and financial stability during a change of government.
President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol is set to take office May 10 with pledges to ease regulations to let the private sector lead economic growth and job creation.
Earlier in the day, Yoon raised the need to create another extra budget to compensate merchants and businesses hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic for their losses caused by tough virus restrictions.
During the election campaign, he promised to spend 50 trillion won ($41 billion) to compensate for business losses.
In February, the country drew up this year's first extra budget of 16.9 trillion won to support pandemic-hit merchants and vulnerable people. (Yonhap)