SEOUL, May 17 (Xinhua) -- Trading in the South Korean foreign exchange (FX) market posted a double-digit increase in the first quarter of this year, Bank of Korea (BOK) data showed on Wednesday.
The daily average FX transactions among domestic banks and the local branches of foreign banks reached 49.98 billion U.S. dollars in the January-March quarter, up 11.9 percent from the previous quarter.
It was down 5.7 percent compared with the first quarter of last year when the FX trading logged a record high of 52.99 billion dollars.
The daily averaged FX trading in the spot market amounted to 19.41 billion dollars in the first quarter, up 11.8 percent from three months earlier.
The foreign exchange derivative trading advanced 12 percent to 30.58 billion dollars due to growing transactions in the non-deliverable forwards and investment in overseas securities.
The FX trading of domestic banks expanded 6.3 percent to 24.24 billion dollars, while the figure for local branches of foreign banks jumped 17.8 percent to 25.74 billion dollars.
