Korea: Forward-looking business confidence increases slightly for October
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 October 2018, the indicator increased to 78 points from 77 points for September. Despite the increase, the BSI came in below both the 100-point threshold for October—signaling another month of pessimism—and the long-run average reading of 86 points.
A breakdown of the BSI components showed that, for October, businesses were more downbeat about profitability than they were for September. However, businesses became more pessimistic regarding sales and sale prices for October, and less optimistic about raw material purchase prices. Confidence among non-manufacturing businesses—the mainstay of the Korean economy—was unchanged at September’s 77 points for October.