S.Korean households' average debt reaches 65,000 USD by March: data

SEOUL, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- South Korean households' average debt topped 70 million won (about 65,000 U.S. dollars), official data showed Thursday.

According to data jointly released by Statistics Korea, the Bank of Korea (BOK) and the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), household debts averaged 7,022,000 won (65,000 U.S. dollars) as of the end of March, up 4.5 percent from a year earlier.

The number of households having debts shed 1.4 percentage points to 63.2 percent of the total in the cited period, and the portion of households having debts of over 300 million won (280,000 U.S. dollars) accounted for 8.3 percent of the total.

Those in their 40s had the largest amount of debts at 85.33 million won (79,000 U.S. dollars) per household. It was followed by those in their 50s with 85.24 million won, those in their 30s with 68.72 million won and those in their 60s and older with 51.65 million won respectively.

Those aged under 30 had an average debt of 23.85 million won (22,000 U.S. dollars) as of end-March, but it posted the fastest growth rate of 41.9 percent compared with 16.81 million won (15,600 U.S. dollars) a year earlier.

The ratio of financial debts to disposable income stood at 121.4 percent for households as of end-March. It was up 4 percentage points from a year earlier because financial debts grew at a faster pace at 5.9 percent than disposable income, which rose 2.4 percent.

The ratio of debt repayment to disposable income came in at 25 percent, meaning that households are required to spend 25 percent of income on repaying debts. Enditem