South Korea's corporate bond sale almost halves in October
South Korea's corporate bond sale almost halved last month due to higher interest rates and lingering worries about credit crunch, financial watchdog data showed Thursday.
The issuance of corporate bonds amounted to 8.3 trillion won (6.1 billion U.S. dollars) in October, down 49.5 percent from the previous month, according to the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS).
The sharp slide was driven by rapid interest rate hikes. The country's central bank has hiked its key rate since August last year from a record low of 0.5 percent to 3.25 percent. Concerns lingered over credit crunch following the belated pledge to repay bonds, sold by a local insurer and a local governmentbacked real estate developer.
Bonds, sold by financial companies, dropped 54.7 percent from a month earlier to 6 trillion won (4.4 billion dollars) in October, while industrial companiesissued bonds gained 21.7 percent to 1.39 trillion won (1 billion dollars).
Colombia's government and the National Liberation Army (ELN), the last recognized rebel group in the country, resumed formal peace talks in Venezuela Monday for the first time since they were suspended in 2019.
The talks are a push by President Gustavo Petro, who in August became Colombia's first-ever leftist leader, and has vowed a less bellicose approach to ending violence wrought by armed groups, including leftist guerrillas and drug traffickers.
In their first meeting, the parties agreed to "resume the dialogue process with full political and ethical will," according to a joint statement.
They added that the talks aim to "build peace" and make "tangible, urgent, and necessary" changes, highlighting the need for "permanent compromises." The first round of talks will last 20 days. Colombia has suffered more than half a century of armed conflict between the state and various groups of left-wing guerrillas, rightwing paramilitaries and drug traffickers.
The ELN started as a leftist ideological movement in 1964 before turning to crime, focusing on kidnapping, extortion, attacks and drug trafficking in Colombia and neighboring Venezuela.
It has around 2,500 members, about 700 more than it did when negotiations were last broken off. The group is primarily active in the Pacific region and along the 2,200-kilometer (1,370mile) border with Venezuela.
Dialogue with the group started in 2016 under ex-president Juan Manuel Santos, who signed a peace treaty with the larger Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebel group that subsequently abandoned its weapons and created a political party.
But the talks with the ELN were called off in 2019 by conservative former president Ivan Duque following a car bomb attack on a police academy in Bogota that left 22 people dead.
Petro-himself a former guerrillareached out to the ELN shortly after coming to power, as part of his "total peace" policy.
The ELN peace talks delegation spent four years based in Cuba, as they had been barred from returning to Colombia by the previous government.
They traveled to Venezuela last month, where the fresh round of talks was announced.
Colombian Defense Minister Ivan Velasquez warned that the negotiations do not imply a "suspension of operations" against the ELN.
Colombian peace commissioner Ivan Danilo Rueda hailed a "historic moment" for the country after the meeting.
"We are here honoring life, the lives of so many beings who are no longer here," Rueda said. "Murdered, disappeared."