(Adds Seoul City delaying transport fare raise)
By Choonsik Yoo
SEOUL, Feb 15 (Reuters) - South Korean President Yoon
Suk-yeol on Wednesday ordered steps to boost competition in the
banking and communication service sectors while calling on those
businesses to help curb soaring costs for the most vulnerable
people.
"I think private-sector players need to voluntarily join
efforts to share the pain by helping keep prices stable," Yoon
said at a meeting with economic ministers, highlighting the role
banks and communications services could play.
He also asked provincial governments to refrain from raising
utility charges, or spread out the pain of higher bills over
time, given expectations that economic hardship will be worse in
the first half of the year than the second.
Soon after his request, the government of the capital,
Seoul, said it would postpone a public transport fare increase
planned for the first half of the year until the second.
Around half of South Korea's population lives or works in
Seoul and its surrounding cities.
The central government said separately it would launch a
task force this month to study ways to improve business
practices at banks amid concerns in the media about their big
profits and generous retirement payouts.
The government said in a statement the task force would draw
up measures by the end of June to boost competition, improve
compensation schemes, strengthen loss-absorbing capability and
reduce reliance on interest income in the banking sector.
Comprising financial regulators, banks, scholars, legal
experts and consumer groups, the task force will also aim to
come up with ways to expand fixed-rate lending and increase
banks' contribution to society, it said.
South Korea has 20 domestically incorporated banks and 35
branches of foreign banks, but business has been dominated by a
handful. Banks have frequently been criticised by the media for
making unfairly large profits by raising interest rates.
In recent weeks, media also reported that some banks had
paid people hundreds of millions of won (hundreds of thousands
of dollars) as compensation for early retirement.
The government in its statement offered no new plan to
introduce more competition among mobile phone services, a sector
also dominated by a handful of providers.
(Reporting by Choonsik Yoo; Editing by Christopher Cushing and
Sonali Paul)
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