Korea on track to becoming world's 10th largest economy in 2027: report

Korea is expected to become the world's 10th largest economy in 2027, a think tank report says. Gettyimagesbank

By Jung Min-ho

Korea is expected to become the world's 10th largest economy in 2027, according to

a report

by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, a British think tank. It currently ranks 12th.

The World Economic League Table 2020, which was published last week, also forecasts that China will become the world's largest economy in 2033 and that India will overtake Germany to become the fourth largest in 2026.

The report says the economic slowdown in China has “badly hit” the Korean economy, which otherwise would grow faster.

“The data available so far for 2019 suggests that there was a slight decline in the rate of GDP growth, with the economy set to have expanded by 2 percent this year,” the report says. “This compares to 2.7 percent in 2018.

“Indeed, Korea's exports fell by 14.3 percent year-on-year in November, which was the sixth straight month of double-digit annual decline.”

A weak rate of population growth has limited overall GDP growth over the past five years, it notes.

The report forecasts that the annual growth rate of the country's economy will rise to an average of 2.8 percent between 2020 and 2025, before picking up further to an average of 2.9 percent between 2026 and 2034.