SEOUL, Aug. 30 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's central bank on Friday indicated a possible policy rate cut further according to the change in external conditions.
Bank of Korea (BOK) Governor Lee Ju-yeol and six other monetary policy board members decided to leave the benchmark seven-day repurchase rate unchanged at 1.50 percent, after lowering it by 25 basis points to the current level last month.
The decision was not made unanimously as two of the policy board members claimed a 25-basis-point rate cut.
The dissenting votes signaled a possible rate cut as early as at the next rate-setting meeting scheduled for Oct. 16.
Governor Lee told a press briefing that the global trade dispute got increasingly worsened as many of the countries strengthened protectionist moves, which weakened global trade.
Lee said the trade feud between South Korea and Japan would certainly influence the South Korean economy given the correlation of the two economies, though the exact effect could not be predicted currently.
The governor noted that it was hard to predict how the change in external conditions would influence the growth path of the South Korean economy, vowing to set the policy rate according to the effects from external risk factors.
The trade spat between Seoul and Tokyo deepened as Japan dropped South Korea off its whitelist of trusted trading partners this month, a move that came after Japan's tighter control last month on its export to South Korea of three materials vital to produce memory chips and display panels.
In response, South Korea also removed Japan from its whitelist of trusted export partners earlier this month.
