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Nearly half of Korea's exporters believe that the export environment will grow worse this year than it was last year, a survey has found.
In the survey of 1,000 exporters by the Korea International Trade Association late last year, 47 percent of respondents predicted that export conditions would deteriorate in 2008. KITA released the results of the survey on Thursday.
As the factors that will worsen this year, unstable foreign exchange rates, unstable wages and unstable labor-management relations were chosen by 61 percent of the respondents.
Some 54 percent said that a worsened trade environment would make it difficult to export, and 52 percent thought that logistics costs would bring export conditions down. Some 79 percent predicted worsening profitability and cited the falling foreign exchange rate as the major cause.
The survey found that to reach the break-even point, exporters believe the Korean won should trade at W943.4 against the U.S. dollar and W851.7 per 100 Japanese yen on average.
Most respondents (59 percent) named China as Korea's strongest rival, followed by Japan (13 percent) and the U.S. (10 percent).
A majority of exporters (61 percent) thought that Korea's top priority for a free trade agreement should be the European Union, followed by Japan (53 percent), China (50 percent), Russia (47 percent), and India (46 percent). And 51 percent said they believed that an FTA with China would help increase exports to the economic superpower.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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