South Korea's base rate stood at 3% in October ahead of the Nov. 26 rate-setting meeting following two increases and a hold, the Bank of Korea's Economic Statistics System showed.
The central bank held the rate on Oct. 22 after raising it at its July and August meetings. That left the rate half a percentage point above its May level.
The next decision falls within the period covered by the supplied 91-day monetary stabilisation bond quote. That market pricing implied a quarter-point increase, rather than another hold, across a window containing one meeting.
The Bank of Korea's 91-day monetary stabilisation bond yielded 3.18% on Oct. 30, about 18 basis points above the base rate. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.
The supplied market-implied calculation assigned a 100% weight to a 25-basis-point increase and zero to either a hold or a quarter-point cut. Those weights reflect market pricing across the full 91-day window and are not a forecast of the board's decision.
The Korea Overnight Financing Repo rate, an overnight financing rate, stood at 3.01% in the supplied market figures. It was much closer to the base rate than the 91-day bond yield.
The US Federal Reserve's target range stood at 3.75% to 4% as of Oct. 29. Its upper limit exceeded the Korean base rate by one percentage point, placing the Korean policy rate below the entire US range.
The recent policy sequence began with a hold at 2.5% on May 28. The central bank then raised the rate by 25 basis points to 2.75% on July 16.
It followed that increase with another 25-basis-point rise on Aug. 27, taking the rate to 3%. The Oct. 22 hold kept that August rate in place through the latest decision.
The two increases together amounted to 50 basis points. The supplied sequence therefore shows an unchanged rate in May, consecutive increases in July and August, and an unchanged rate again in October.
The October observation in the statistics system matches the rate set at the latest meeting. The Nov. 26 meeting is the next scheduled opportunity for the Monetary Policy Board to set the base rate.
