A research institute of the Bank of Korea (BOK) said Sunday that Korea may be forced to record negative economic growth in the 2040s unless the nation improves its productivity, as its working-age population is rapidly shrinking.

In a report, the BOK’s Economic Research Institute expected Korea’s economy to grow some 2.1 percent in the 2020s and some 0.6 percent in the 2030s but to shrink some 0.1 percent in the 2040s.

The assessment by Cho Tae-hyung, vice head of the institute, was based on an assumption that Korea may fail to improve its productivity to make up for a decline in the working-age population.

If Korea improves its productivity to cope with a demographic change, the report predicted that the nation’s economy would grow some 2.4 percent in the 2020s, some 0.9 percent in the 2030s and some 0.2 percent in the 2040s.

“It is most important to keep productivity growth to mitigate future slowdowns in economic growth,” Cho said in the report.

The BOK has recently projected Korea’s economy to grow 1.4 percent for all of 2023, down from a 2.6 percent expansion in 2022. (Yonhap)