By Kim Yon-se
Staff Reporter


Bank of Korea Governor Park Seung speaks during a parliamentary inspection session of the central bank on Thursday. Park said the central bank expects gross domestic product growth to reach 5 percent next year.

Bank of Korea Governor Park Seung said that the central bank expects economic growth to rise to 5 percent next year from 3.8 percent projected for this year.
``We became confident about a 5 percent growth next year after monitoring the current economic conditions,’’ Park said during a session of a parliamentary inspection of the central bank.

Park said that the central bank’s estimate is not much different than those offered by private economic institutes.

Asked about the optimum level of the nation’s foreign exchange reserves, Park said that the central bank sees no need to cumulate more currency reserves actively.

``The current foreign exchange reserves (are not too high) to pose any problem to the economy. I don’t think we need to make efforts to cumulate more currency reserves intentionally,’’ Park said.

The country’s foreign reserves came to $206.73 billion at the end of September, up $20 million from the end of August. Korea holds the world’s fourth largest foreign reserves as of the end of September.