SEOUL, KOREA - Korea's export companies saw their export performance decline due to the weakness in the yen's value. According to LG Economic Research Institute's report on the impact of currency changes on corporate performance, Japan's exporters saw their performance improve sharply from the fourth quarter of last year when the yen's declining pace started picking up, in contrast to the deterioration in the performance of Korean export companies.
The decline in the yen's value led to an improvement in the competitiveness of Japanese export items, thereby dealing a blow against Korean companies which compete head-on with Japanese rivals in the international markets.
The report is based on an analysis on the export performance of Korea's 60 companies and Japan's 144 companies. Korean companies saw their sales growth fall 1.6 percent in the fourth quarter of last year and 1.1 percent in the first quarter of this year from 2.5 percent in the third quarter of last year.
In contrast, those of Japanese companies rose from -1.0 percent in the third quarter of last year to 1.2 percent in the fourth quarter and 5.1 percent in the first quarter of this year.
The report predicted that the yen-to-dollar exchange rate would average at 100 won per 10 yen this year, which would drag down the Korean economic growth rate by about 0.2 percentage point.