East Asia Econ

Korea – BOK remains cautious

The tone from today's BOK meeting was cautious. The new rate dot plot suggests that at the margin risks for policy are still weighted towards loosening, the upgrade to the GDP growth forecast was only 0.2ppts, and having made that change, the bank thinks risks to the outlook are now balanced.

Paul Cavey

Feb 26, 2026 • 2 min read

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East Asia Today

The big policy event today was the BOM meeting. The big data release was Taiwan's Q4 BOP data, showing a huge current account surplus. Also worth noting today are trade data for Japan for the first 10 days of February. And we also have a new video, discussing the cyclical outlook for China.

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Taiwan – huge CA to rise yet further

The surge in the current account surplus of January-September continued into the end of 2025. In Q4, the surplus reached almost 30% of GDP. The government's GDP forecast implies that will be roughly the size of the full-year surplus in 2026. Taiwan needs huge capital outflows to keep the TWD stable.

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East Asia Today

Highlights of a longer note summarising Korea's cycle before the BOK meeting tomorrow. Also today, Korea's IIP position in 2025, as well as services PPI inflation in Japan and labour market data for Taiwan in January.