S. Korea minister: private sector leading recovery

But Yoon Jeung-hyun told executives from foreign-invested companies that it was premature for the country to implement exit strategies.

"Supported by the government's tremendous efforts, the private sector is now beginning to show its potential to take over the stimulus role from the government," he said, while adding it was "too early to implement exit strategies because the vitality of the private sector is not strong enough yet."

South Korea's economy, Asia's fourth-largest, expanded by a seasonally adjusted 2.9 percent in the third quarter over the previous quarter -- the best in 7-½ years -- but the growth owed mainly to a reduced pace of inventory adjustments.

"Besides, weakness in the labor market continues, inflation rates have barely increased and concerns over overheated asset markets have eased," Yoon said.

The Bank of Korea's policy members said during their Oct. 9 meeting that interest rates needed to be kept at a record low of 2.0 percent for some time due to uncertainties surrounding the world economy, meeting minutes released late on Tuesday showed.

The central bank has held the benchmark 7-day repurchase agreement rate steady for nine consecutive months after reductions totalling 3.25 percentage points between October last year and February this year.

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