Korea`s Travel Account Deficit Ranked 3rd in the World

With the increasing number of the overseas trips, it has been shown that the last year`s deficit of Korea`s travel account balance ranked the third in the world.

According to the Bank of Korea on 27th, the last year`s travel account balance deficit is 3.77 billion dollars and thus falls in the 3rd place of the deficit scale following Japan and England.

The Bank of Korea stated that Japan and England had deficits of 23.2 billion dollars and 19.1 billion dollars respectively in 2001. The bank also figured out their last year`s deficits to be around the same range.

Taiwan ranked the 3rd in year 2001 with its 3.3 billion dollar deficit but with its annually reducing deficit, the Bank of Korea estimates that Taiwan most likely had fewer deficits than Korea last year.

Looking at the deficit summary, the 1.41 billion dollars of deficit from studying abroad and language training slightly increased from the 1.14 billion dollars of 1997 record, right before the foreign exchange crisis.

However, the 2.36 billion dollar deficit of the general traveling balance such as from tourism and golf trips has been increased by 14 times from the 0.17 billion dollars of 2001 record. The general travel account balance deficit has recorded profit since 1998, from the year right after the foreign exchange crisis to 2000.

In-Gyu Lee, a section manager of the Bank of Korea`s international balance statistic team, pointed out, “There are no problems for studying abroad and overseas training activities since these are the future investments but the general travel account balance deficits are expenditures which can`t contribute any positive effect on the public economy. If the deficit of the general travel account balance increases, it will indeed have a negative effect on the overall public economy as well as the current deficit.”

Kwu-Jin Lim mhjh22@donga.com