Korean Companies" Foreign Reserves Over 15 Billion Dollars

The amount of foreign reserves Korean companies have retained surpassed the 15 billion dollar mark as of early September. The Bank of Korea (BOK) revealed on September 9 that the amount of foreign deposits (almost all are companies' deposits) in Korea reached 12.6 billion dollars on September 5, rapidly increasing from 12.19 billion dollars on September 1. The deposit in merchant banks in Korea surpassed 3 billion dollars to reach a total of 15.6 billion dollars. This scale of foreign deposits is the largest ever.
Sources at the BOK explained that Korean companies are now increasing their foreign deposits to reimburse their foreign debts. Furthermore, as the current level of interest rates in Korea is falling sharply, this has meant that the difference between the level of interest rates in Korea and those in international markets has decreased greatly. Thus Korean companies are increasing their foreign deposits, sources said.