Won Spurs Shopping Abroad as Local Spending Drops: Korea Markets

By Jiyeun Lee  

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Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg

Choi Kyung Hwan, South Korea's finance minister, unveiled a plan on July 24 to boost... Read More

Chung So Young spent $800 in less than an hour on branded clothes and shoes in Chicago in June as a surging South Korean won made prices irresistible.
“I found myself hesitating less as a dollar only cost around 1,000 won,” the 35-year-old manager at a Seoul-based biotechnology company said by phone on July 31. “I felt like I’d be forgoing an opportunity if I don’t buy now.”
Chung is among 1.29 million South Koreans who spent a record $1.7 billion abroad in June as the won soared to levels last seen in 2008. Asia’s best currency performance over the last six months has made overseas holidays and shopping cheaper while hindering efforts to reverse a slump in domestic spending that President Park Geun Hye has said risks pushing the region’s fourth-largest economy into a “long tunnel” of depression.
“Currency appreciation increases purchasing power, but we need to watch where the spending flows to,” Bae Min Keun, an economist at LG Economic Research Institute in Seoul, said in an Aug. 1 phone interview. “A stronger won contributes little to domestic consumption while posing
risks to exporters. I expect the government to continue slowing its appreciation.”
The won has advanced 4.5 percent in the past six months to 1,031.20 per dollar as of 10:43 a.m. in Seoul, data compiled by Bloomberg show. It reached 1,008.37 on July 4, the strongest in six years, and has since weakened on speculation the Bank of Korea will reduce its benchmark interest rate to complement the government’s efforts to boost economic growth.

Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg

An employee arranges clothing at the I'Park Mall department store, majority-owned by... Read More

Government Stimulus

Finance Minister Choi Kyung Hwan unveiled a plan on July 24 to boost fiscal spending by 11.7 trillion won ($11.3 billion) in the second half of this year after the government lowered its 2014 growth forecast to 3.7 percent from 3.9 percent. South Korea’s economy, beset by a slump in growth amid low inflation and a record current-account surplus, risks following Japan’s so-called “lost twenty years” during the 1991-2010 period, the ministry said in a statement the same day.
Choi said on July 30 that exchange-rate volatility is hurting the profitability of exporters. He had said during his nomination hearing on July 8 that smoothing operations are necessary to reduce currency fluctuations.
Hyundai Motor Co., South Korea’s largest automaker, and Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s biggest smartphone maker, cited the strong won as a reason for declines in their earnings last quarter.

BOK Outlook

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Barclays Plc, ING Groep NV and Nomura Holdings Inc. are among banks that have reversed calls that the central bank will either raise rates or keep them unchanged, and now predict a cut. Six of 23 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg from July 17 to July 22 expect a reduction to 2.25 percent from 2.5 percent this quarter. The authority next reviews policy Aug. 14.
While the median estimate of 28 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg is that the won will appreciate 1.3 percent to 1,018 per dollar by the end of the year, BNP Paribas SA recommends selling the currency on bets the BOK will cut borrowing costs.
“The BOK is under intense pressure from the government to ease monetary policy, and would be happy to see the won weaken to reduce pressure,” Mirza Baig and Jasmine Poh, Singapore-based strategists at BNP, wrote in a July 31 report.
Credit Suisse Group AG, however, expects the won to advance to as high as 1,000 per dollar this year and to 975 in 2015 on bets South Korea’s current-account surplus will widen as recoveries in the nation’s overseas markets boost exports.

‘Huge Surplus’

“We expect a huge current-account surplus coming with improving exports and signs that the U.S., China and even the euro area are all growing,” Ray Farris, global head of currency strategy at Credit Suisse in Singapore, said in an e-mail interview yesterday. “The amount of fiscal stimulus by South Korea’s government to support domestic demand is pretty small, and history doesn’t support the idea it will boost imports.”
The finance ministry on July 24 raised its projection for the surplus in the broadest measure of trade to 5 percent of gross domestic product from 3.4 percent.
Farris said that while he expects South Korean authorities to intervene in the currency market, they will probably to allow some appreciation in the won.
Overseas spending by South Koreans increased 23 percent in June from a year earlier, latest central bank figures show, while private-sector consumption shrank 0.3 percent last quarter from the preceding three months. Some 7.7 million Koreans traveled abroad in the first six months, 5 percent more than a year earlier, Korea Immigration Service data show.

Online Shopping

South Koreans spent $718.4 million on goods bought online from retailers based overseas in the first half, or 70 percent of the total in 2013, Korea Customs Service data show. Sales at local department and discount stores fell in four of the first six months, official figures show.
Chung is Seoul is hoping the won will remain strong when she takes her next business trip in a few months.
“I’m visiting the U.S. again in early October,” she said. “I plan to buy some winter coats if the exchange rate still remains favorable as prices will be much lower than in Korea.”