The financial health of South Korea’s public sector is improving for the second consecutive year, showed a report by the Bank of Korea last week.
The total revenue of the general government sector and public corporations stood at 735.6 trillion won ($659.4 billion) in 2015, up 3.4 percent from the previous year. The public sector’s total expenditure recorded 701.8 trillion won, a 1.1 percent on-year increase.
The outpacing revenue growth produced a 33.8 trillion won surplus last year, nearly doubling from a 17.4 trillion won surplus in 2014. The increased surplus is largely contributable to surpluses of state-owned corporations, which swung into the black for the first time since 2007 when the BOK started tracing the statistics.