It looks like South Korea's struggling exports are continuing to weigh on the economy... with the goods account seeing its smallest surplus in more than four years in February.<br />Our Ko Roonhee starts us off. <br />The goods account records a country's goods transactions with the rest of the world... by subtracting the amount of imports from exports.<br /> And according to the Bank of Korea on Thursday, Korea's goods account marked its lowest surplus in more than four years in February.<br /> The account had a surplus of around 5-and-a-half billion U.S. dollars for the month,... down from 5-point-7 billion the previous month. <br />Exports dropped by 10-point-8 percent on-year-- their sharpest decline since 2016.<br />The central bank attributed the low export figure to poor chip sales...which account for roughly 20-percent of all outbound shipments.<br />Over the past few months, unit prices of semiconductors have dropped due to low demand and high inventory levels in data centers.<br /> According to DRAMeXchange's report back in February, contract prices of DRAM products across all major application markets decreased by more than 15-percent on month in January.<br />A separate report added that inventory levels have kept climbing since the fourth quarter of 2018... and most DRAM suppliers are holding around six weeks' worth of inventory.<br />Another reason for the smaller goods account surplus is the drop in petroleum products exports. <br />A rise in competition from the U.S. and China in the petroleum sector contributed to the fall.<br />And the central bank also pointed out that the slowdown in China's manufacturing sector negatively affected Korea's exports.<br />Korea's current account, which includes trade in services, was in surplus for the 82nd consecutive month.<br />The services account deficit fell to around 1-point-8 billion dollars from a deficit of 2-point-six billion a year earlier.<br />This was due to an improvement in the travel account... after an uptick in the number of visitors from China and Japan.<br />Ko Roon-hee, Arirang News. <br />
