An official from the International Monetary Fund(IMF) assessed that South Korea’s economy has “strong fundamentals” and “ample buffers” but advised that consideration be made for the nation’s high debt level when implementing policy.

Meeting with local media outlets on Tuesday, Krishna Srinivasan, the director of the IMF's Asia and Pacific Department, praised the country’s ratio of net foreign assets-to-gross domestic product(GDP) of 40 percent.

He also said the foreign currency reserves, standing at 25 percent of GDP, put the country in a much stronger position than it was in during the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s when it sat at four percent.

However, the IMF official expressed concern that the nation’s debt has reached 55 percent of GDP, and advised that fiscal policy should be "budget neutral" with a "strong medium-term anchor” so as not to add to the debt.

The official had a positive assessment of the Bank of Korea's(BOK) rake hikes aimed at curbing inflation, saying a "head-on" response would prevent inflation expectations from becoming "unanchored."

He projected inflation in the country to peak by the year's end before "gradually" returning to the BOK-targeted two-percent range.