South Korea's terms of trade rose for the fifth straight month in August, as import prices fell at a faster pace than export prices, central bank data showed Friday.

The country's net terms-of-trade index for goods -- a gauge of trade terms -- came in at 96.75 in August, up 6.7 percent from a year earlier, according to preliminary data from the Bank of Korea (BOK).

It marked the fifth straight month of an on-year rise since April, when the trade terms posted the first on-year gain in over two years on low oil prices and the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The figure is calculated by dividing the index for export prices by that for import prices, showing the amount of imports a country can buy for each unit of exports. The base year is 2015 with a benchmark index of 100.

In August, export prices declined 5.8 percent from the previous year on a customs-clearance basis, and import prices fell 11.7 percent, causing the trade terms to improve, the BOK said.

South Korea's exports, which account for about 50 percent of the economy, extended their slump to the sixth consecutive month in August amid a flare-up in new coronavirus cases, government data showed. But the pace of decline slowed on a recovery in shipments of chips.

The subindex measuring the country's export volume fell 3.6 percent on-year, while that of import volume shed 4.8 percent in the cited period, the BOK said. (Yonhap)