S. Korea's money supply growth slows in Nov.

SEOUL, Jan. 7 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's money supply grew at the slowest pace in
four months in November mainly due to cutbacks in foreign investors' securities
investments, the central bank said Thursday.

The country's M2, a narrower measure of its money supply, reached 1,564.2
trillion won (US$1.38 trillion) in November, up 9.7 percent from the previous
year, according to the Bank of Korea (BOK). November's growth marked the slowest
increase since July when the M2 grew an identical 9.7 percent.
The M2 covers currency in circulation and all types of deposits with maturity
less than two years at lenders and non-banking financial institutions, excluding
those at insurers and brokerage houses.
The BOK said in a separate statement that the M2 growth is estimated to have
slowed to around 8 percent in December mainly because foreigners withdrew their
investments in local bonds and companies repaid their debts to bolster year-end
balance sheets.
Meanwhile, the country's liquidity aggregate, the widest measure of the money
supply, expanded 10.4 percent in November from a year earlier, compared with a
10.6 percent on-year advance in October, the BOK said.
The data comes a day before the BOK makes its monthly interest-rate decision. The
BOK is widely forecast to freeze the benchmark seven-day repo rate at a record
low of 2 percent for the 11th consecutive month. It slashed the rate by a
combined 3.25 percentage points between October 2008 and February in a bid to put
the brakes on a sharp economic free-fall.
sooyeon@yna.co.kr
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