South Korean President Park Geun-hye nominated Lee Ju-yeol as the next Bank of Korea (BOK) governor, drawing on a central bank veteran to help steer Asia’s fourth-biggest economy.
Lee, 61, a former deputy governor of the bank with more than 30 years experience, would replace Kim Choong-soo, whose four-year term ends on March 31, according to Yoo Myung-hee, a presidential office spokeswoman.
While Lee will face the first South Korean parliamentary vetting of a nominee for governor in the central bank’s 64-year history, the legislature does not have the power to veto Park’s choice.
The new governor faces pressure to delay any interest-rate increase after an adviser to the president said on Thursday last week that the economy needs support because of weakness in consumption. He will also be scrutinized over whether he expands on Kim’s efforts to promote diversity at the central bank, which gained its first female deputy governor in July last year.
“Lee Ju-yeol has been neutral when it comes to monetary policies, and is quite balanced,” Hong Kong-based Nomura Holdings Inc economist Kwon Young-sun said. “It’s important for the central bank to have someone like Lee. It’s a good decision.”
The bank is likely to remain “neutral or dovish” in monetary policy given the make-up of the rest of the seven-person policy board, Hong Kong-based HSBC Holdings PLC economist Ronald Man (文略韜) said.
Potential issues for an incoming governor include how to respond if additional easing by the Bank of Japan pushes the yen even lower, putting pressure on South Korean exporters, Man said.
Lee, currently a professor at Yonsei University in Seoul, started at the bank in 1977, and worked in the research, foreign exchange and monetary policy divisions before rising to the senior deputy governor in April 2009, his resume distributed by the bank yesterday showed.
A graduate of Yonsei University, Lee received a master’s degree in economics from Pennsylvania State University in 1988.
“Lee is a BOK man, period. He is a quiet man, and an academic dynamo,” said Kim Hyeon-wook, a Seoul-based economist at SK Research Institute and a former BOK economist, who worked with Lee during the 2008 global financial crisis.
Lee will have to deal with challenges from the US Federal Reserve’s stimulus tapering that could increase volatility in capital flows to record household debt that is weighing on domestic demand.
Inflation accelerated to 1.1 percent in January from 0.9 percent in October last year — the lowest since 1999 — and will pick up to the central bank’s target range of 2.5 percent to 3.5 percent in the second half of this year, the economist said in January.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
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