The South Korean won, down almost 40 percent this year on fears for the economy, hit a nearly 11-year low on Friday but the country’s president said the government should not intervene to help.

The won’s latest tumble comes as Asia’s fourth-largest economy is expected to be hard hit by the global downturn, with one leading investment bank predicting the local economy would go into deep recession next year.

The financial authorities have repeatedly intervened to try to calm the volatile currency market, traders said, but President Lee Myung-bak was quoted as saying they should keep out.

“The government should not touch the foreign exchange market but should stay away,” Yonhap news agency quoted him as telling reporters during a visit to Peru.

As the economic and financial troubles spread, the country’s central bank is due to hold an emergency policy meeting on Monday to decide whether to join a proposed 10 trillion won ($6.57 billion) fund to buy bonds issued by local companies.

By 0312, GMT the won was quoted at 1,519.9/1,521.6, nearly 2 percent below the previous day and close to lows last reached nearly 11 years ago, when the economy was mired in the Asian financial crisis.

CAPITAL FLIGHT

One of the region’s worst performing currencies this year, the won’s latest tumble has been exacerbated by continued capital flight and mounting fears over the health of the economy.

Investment bank UBS said the economy could shrink 3 percent in 2009, marking its first annual decline in 11 years, because of a looming bust in a local credit bubble.

“We painfully realized that our 1.1 percent growth forecast for Korea in 2009, while being consistently the lowest on the street, is just too optimistic if our deleveraging theme plays out. Thus we are lowering the 2009 GDP forecast to minus-3 percent,” UBS said in a note to clients.

It was the worst outlook made by a global investment bank for South Korea’s gross domestic product in 2009. It compares with the government’s official target of around 4 percent growth.

The last time South Korea was in recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of economic contraction, was in the wake of the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s.

Adding to the gloom, government data showed that South Korean household spending posted a record drop in the third quarter as real incomes stagnated.

Household consumption expenditure fell 2.4 percent in the third quarter from the year before, trailing the second quarter’s decline of 0.2 percent, the National Statistical Office said.

It was the largest quarterly contraction and the first decline of two consecutive quarters since the office began to compile the data in the first quarter of 2003.

Source: http://www.afxnews.com

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