Tuesday, August 13th, 2013
Lee Hyun-young, Bank of Korea manager in charge of price statistics, said, "Despite the rise in international oil price last year, the overall import prices showed a downward trend largely due to a fall in other primary goods prices and a favorable turn in the won-dollar exchange rate."
By individual item, import intermediate goods prices fell 5.4 percent year on year, of which those for general machinery (-12.9%) and primary steel products (-11.8%) led the pack. The import prices for capital goods (-5.6%) and raw materials with agricultural, forestry, fishery, and mining components (3.7%) also exhibited a declining trend. In contrast, the import prices for consumer goods rose 0.7 percent.