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The Bank of Korea significantly lowered its forecast for Korea's economic growth this year to -1.3%. This is an estimate assuming that the global corona spread will calm down in the future.

This is Park Chan-geun.

<Reporter> The

growth rate of the Korean economy this year as revised by the Bank of Korea is -1.3%.

We expected -0.2% growth, down 2.3%p from the previous May, but again, we lowered it significantly.

Exports are not recovering as expected, and the recovery of private consumption is expected to be limited by the re-proliferation of the corona.

Even this is based on the assumption that the global corona spread will calm down next year and that the current second-stage social distancing in Korea will be maintained.

Given the pessimistic assumption that the corona re-proliferation trend continues through winter, the growth rate is forecast to drop to -2.2%.

[Lee Joo-yeol / President of the Bank of Korea: In fact, the future growth trend will depend on the development of Corona 19, the government's response accordingly, and the behavior of each economic entity. If the situation worsens, the number may fall below that number.] If

this year's growth rate is determined to be negative, it will be negative growth after 22 years since the 1998 financial crisis.

If social distancing is upgraded to 3 levels, a bigger blow is inevitable.

[Hong Nam-ki/Deputy Prime Minister of Economy: Just as you have successfully overcome the first Gobi Valley of the corona crisis in the first half, I believe you will overcome this second Gobi Valley well again.]

In order to overcome the crisis of the corona re-proliferation phase, we extended the maturity extension of loans for SMEs and small business owners and the delay in payment of interest by another 6 months until the end of March next year.

It is possible only if there is no delinquency, such as arrears, capital erosion, or closure of business.

However, some point out that it has become difficult for financial companies to manage risk.

Currently, the principal amount of loans received by extension of the loan maturity is KRW 75 trillion and KRW 100 billion when the interest repayment is postponed.

(Video editing: Joonhee Kim, CG: Kyungmoon Lee)