S Korea's current account surplus rises to record high in March

SEOUL, April 29 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's current account surplus marked a record high in March thanks to a great leap in the goods balance surplus, the central bank said Wednesday.

The current account surplus reached 6.65 billion U.S. dollars last month, sharply up from 3.56 billion U.S. dollars in February, according to a report by the Bank of Korea (BOK).

The March figure stands at the largest level since January 1980 when the BOK started compiling related data.

The record surplus can be attributed to a jump in the goods balance surplus, according to the BOK.

The goods balance marked a surplus of 6.98 billion U.S. dollars in March, more than doubling from the previous month when the figure hit 3.11 billion U.S. dollars.

The increase in the goods balance came as an on-year fall of 35.8 percent in imports exceeded that of 17.8 percent in exports, the BOK said.

Meanwhile, the service account and the income account stood in the negative territory in March, with a deficit of 645.7 million U.S. dollars and 215.7 million U.S. dollars, respectively.

The capital account posted a net outflow of 2.18 billion U.S. dollars last month, close to a 2.98 billion-U.S. dollar outflow a month earlier.

As the trade surplus is expected to keep moving upward, reaching around 4 to 5 billion U.S. dollars for April, the country's current account surplus may hit about 3 billion U.S. dollars for the month, a high official at the BOK told a press conference.