Credit card spending growth in Korea slows in Dec.

SEOUL, Jan. 7 (Yonhap) -- The growth of credit card spending in South Korea slowed in December as people curtailed the use of plastic money amid a deepening economic slump, an industry association said Wednesday.

Spending via credit cards, excluding cash advance services, amounted to 27.15
trillion won (US$20.8 billion) last month, up 9 percent from a year earlier,
according to the Credit Finance Association. The December figure moderated from a
9.8 percent on-year expansion in the previous month.
The on-year growth of card spending has slowed since September when global
financial turmoil, sparked by the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.,
began to hit the economy.
But for the whole year of 2008, card bills came in at 300.9 trillion won, up
18.08 percent from the previous year, the association said. It was the first time
that card spending topped the 300-trillion-won mark.
The data cames as the South Korean economy grew 0.5 percent in the third quarter
from three months earlier, the weakest growth in four years, amid faltering
exports and sluggish domestic demand.
The country's central bank predicted that the economy will expand just 2 percent
this year, down from an estimated 3.7 percent advance in 2008.
sooyeon@yna.co.kr
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