Anchor: The Bank of Korea maintained the benchmark rate for the eleventh straight month while lowering its 2018 growth forecast for South Korea to two-point-seven percent on Thursday. 
Our Bae Joo-yon has more. 

Report: The central bank on Thursday kept the nation’s key interest rate at one-and-a-half percent apparently out of concerns that a raise would likely weigh on the economy more than side effects resulting from lower rates.

Various factors are said to have led the bank to keep the rate unchanged. Although exports and consumption remain robust, facility investment has fallen for six straight months while employment is sluggish. 

Last year, the number of people with jobs saw growth of 300-thousand on average every month. But from this February, that growth slipped below 100-thousand before sliding further to five-thousand in July and three-thousand in August. 

A rise in consumer prices has yet to reach the bank’s target of two percent. 

The trade war between the U.S. and China and uncertainties in emerging economies are also likely to have hampered the bank from raising the rate. 

Nevertheless, there is growing consensus that the bank will increase rates at its next monetary policy meeting next month, which will be this year’s last, given that the U.S. is set to carry out another rate hike within the year and the bank’s governor, Lee Ju-yeol, has hinted at tighter rates before the year’s end. 

Meanwhile, in its revised economic outlook released later in the day, the central bank downgraded its 2018 growth forecast for South Korea by point-two percentage point to two-point-seven percent. 

The bank also marked down its growth forecast for next year by point-one-percentage point, also to two-point-seven percent.
Bae Joo-yon, KBS World Radio News.