Australia, Korea Central Banks Harbor Doubts on Global Outlook

The central banks of Australia and South Korea said the world economic outlook has become clouded, boosting their scope to slow the pace of future rate increases.


There is “more uncertainty over the global outlook than there had been earlier in the year,” the Reserve Bank of Australia said in minutes of its Aug. 3 meeting in Sydney today. Bank of Korea Governor Kim Choong Soo echoed that view, saying in a speech that markets “may prove turbulent in the future.”

Both banks kept their benchmark interest rates unchanged this month after South Korea boosted borrowing costs in July, and Australia led Group of 20 members with six moves between October and May. Global stocks fell last week on increased evidence growth may falter in the world’s biggest economies, including Japan, which last quarter expanded at less than a fifth of the pace economists estimated.