Korea: Forward-looking business confidence increases for September
The Bank of Korea’s forward-looking business confidence indicator (BSI) for the manufacturing sector has registered pessimism among businesses for every month since June 2011. For September 2018, the indicator increased to 77 points from 73 points in August. Despite the increase, the BSI came in below both the 100-point threshold for September—signaling another month of pessimism—and the long-run average reading of 86 points.
A breakdown of the BSI components showed that, for September, businesses were less pessimistic about sales prospects, sales prices and profitability than they were for August. Meanwhile, business optimism regarding raw material purchase prices was unchanged for September. Confidence among non-manufacturing businesses—the mainstay of the Korean economy—rose to 77 for September from 74 points for August.