Korea to graduate from IMF stewardship in Aug.

By August, Korea will have repaid all the money it borrowed from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) at the end of 1997, when the country faced a foreign exchange crisis, thus signaling its complete graduation from IMF-stewardship.

The Bank of Korea said Saturday that Korea would repay $500 million out of its $5.8 billion IMF standby loan Monday and complete the repayment of all loans by the end of August.

Although the concrete repayment schedule will be fixed after negotiations with the IMF, Korea plans to repay $2 billion by the end of February, another $2 billion by the end of May, and the remaining $1.8 billion by the end of August.

The standby loan was originally scheduled to be paid back during the period from March of this year to May 2004. But the IMF requested that Korea repay its debt earlier than planned, in light of the volume of the country¡¯s foreign exchange holdings and its status in the international community.

Noting that Korea¡¯s foreign exchange holdings increased by $400-$500 million every month, the central bank anticipated that the country would be able to maintain its foreign exchange holdings at the $95 billion level ($96.2 billion as of the end of last year), even after repaying the standby loan.