<Image: Yonhap News>
The Korea Economic Research Institute has forecast the country's economy will shrink 2.3 percent on-year this year.
The latest projection is down from its earlier estimate of a 1.9 percent gain made in the fourth quarter of last year.
KERI said despite the government's efforts, it won't be sufficient to reverse the trend of an economic downturn as the coronavirus outbreak has virtually paralyzed production and consumption in Korea amid worsening external conditions.
The private think tank joins other institutions that have sharply downgraded their growth predictions for South Korea.
Nomura Securities of Japan recently revised its 2020 growth outlook for South Korea to minus 6.7 percent, and British think tank Capital Economics cut its prediction to minus 3 percent in a report published Friday.■
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