artificial intelligence<\/a> investment, although the \u200cIran war was set to drive up imports and inflation, a Reuters poll showed on \u200bMonday.<\/p>\nExports from Asia’s fourth-largest economy, a bellwether for global trade, were projected to have risen 44.9% from a year earlier, according to a median forecast of 11 economists.<\/p>\n
That would be faster than the 28.7% rise in February and the strongest \u200csince May 2021. It \u2060would also mark the 10th consecutive month of year-on-year gains.<\/p>\n
“Semiconductor prices are continuing to rise sharply on robust demand for \u2060memory chips,” said Chun Kyu-yeon, an economist at Hana Securities, expecting this year’s trade surpluses at record levels.<\/p>\n
In the first 20 days of this month, exports rose \u200b50.4%, as \u200bsemiconductor sales surged 163.9%. Shipments to \u200bthe U.S. and China rose 57.8% \u200cand 69.0%, respectively, while those to the European Union were up 6.6%.<\/p>\n
“However, due to the impact of high oil prices, import growth will also be higher than previously projected,” said Park Sang-hyun, an economist at iM Securities. “It is expected that there will be some disruption to shipments to the Middle \u200cEast.”<\/p>\n
In Monday’s monthly survey, imports were forecast to \u200bhave risen 18.0% in March from a \u200byear earlier, after growing 7.5% \u200bin February. That would mark the biggest jump since September \u200c2022.<\/p>\n
The median forecast for the country’s \u200bmonthly trade balance stood \u200bat $21.2 billion, wider than $15.4 billion in the previous month and a record high.<\/p>\n
Consumer inflation probably accelerated in March to 2.4%, the fastest pace \u200bin four months. Inflation \u200cwas 2.0% in February.<\/p>\n
South Korea is scheduled to report trade figures \u200bfor March on Wednesday, April 1, at 9 a.m. (0000 GMT).<\/p>\n
(Reporting by \u200bJihoon Lee; Editing by Kate Mayberry)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jihoon Lee SEOUL, March 30 (Reuters) – South Korea’s March exports probably rose at the strongest pace…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":570312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,13794,46,219345,64270,18262],"class_list":{"0":"post-570311","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-economist","12":"tag-economy","13":"tag-hana-securities","14":"tag-reuters-poll","15":"tag-south-korea"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}