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Korea's debt to top $4.6 trillion this year: BIS
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By Lee Kyung-min
Korea’s combined household, business and government debt is expected to top 6,000 trillion won ($4.6 trillion) this year, Bank for International Settlements (BIS) data showed Thursday. Korea was the only country to see its total debt-to-GDP ratio rise among OECD members.
The BIS data showed Korea’s total credit to the non-financial sector, or core debt, stood at 5,956.9 trillion won as of the second quarter. It was up 4 percentage points from the previous year.
Korea’s household debt came to 2,218.3 trillion won, corporate debt was at 2,703.3 trillion won and government debt was 1,035.2 trillion won.
As of June, the core debt-to-GDP ratio was 273.1 percent, up 4.9 percentage points from a year prior.
The year-on-year increase is explained in large part by both the corporate debt-to-GDP ratio climbing to 123.9 percent, up from 117.6 percent, and the government debt-to-GDP ratio to 47.5 percent, up from 45.5 percent. Household debt-to-GDP, meanwhile, declined to 101.7 percent, down from 105.1 percent.
Korea was the only OECD member to see its core debt-to-GDP ratio rise over the past year.
The ratio for the 31 OECD members averaged 229.4 percent as of June, down 14 percentage points from 243.5 percent a year earlier.
Korea’s ratio itself was the ninth highest among the 31 members.
The figure for Japan was the highest at 414 percent, followed by Luxembourg (403.2 percent), France (322.7 percent), Canada (307.9 percent), Switzerland (299.7 percent), Belgium (292.2 percent) and Sweden (274.5 percent).