Posted on 04 Jan 2008
Economists: GDP to reach $1 tril. this year
Korea’s
growth domestic product (GDP) is expected to pass one trillion U.S. dollars
this year, economists at major think tanks said Thursday.
They said nominal GDP was an estimated 970 billion dollars
last year, and that despite slower growth, Korea’s GDP has risen an average of
85 billion dollars a year for the past four years.
GDP is a measure of economic size, and is defined as the
combined market value of all goods and services produced in a country in a
given period. Nominal figures are not adjusted for inflation.
Song Tae-jung, a researcher at LG Economic Research
Institute, said, "Only about 10 countries have a nominal GDP larger than
one trillion dollars. The Korean economy has been growing very fast, although
the gains have been partly helped by the strengthening of the domestic currency
since 2001."
"A larger GDP means that Korea accounts for a bigger share
of the world economy," Hyundai Research Institute’s Joo Won said.
According to World Bank data from 2006, one trillion dollars
of GDP is equivalent to 2.1 percent of the world economy and similar to the
size of the Brazilian economy, which ranked 10th in the world that year. The United States had the world’s largest economy
with 13.2 trillion dollars in GDP, followed by Japan
with 4.3 trillion dollars and Germany
with 2.9 trillion dollars. China
came in fourth with 2.6 trillion dollars, and the United
Kingdom, France,
Italy, Canada and Spain rounded out the top ten.
In 1970, Korea’s
nominal GDP was a little over eight billion dollars but grew to 64 billion
dollars in 1980. Six years later, Korea broke the 100-billion dollar
mark and then recorded 264 billion dollars in 1990.
