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Commercial bank deposit rates have plummeted in months.

Now, even the 2% range has reappeared, and reporter Yoonha Cho pointed out why deposit rates are so low even though the benchmark interest rate is still high.

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Mr. A, in his 1s, who has steadily put in savings for the
past year and has earned 2 million won, tried to put this money in a fixed deposit,

but he was worried about the falling interest rate.

[Mr. A: (The interest rate) is not as high as I thought, so I thought it was more than 40%, but there are a lot of deposits that are lower than that now.]

Deposit rates, which once rose to 3% late last year and early this year, have fallen rapidly in recent years, leaving many people like Mr. A worried.

Currently, the interest rate for term deposits at commercial banks is 6~2%, and products in the 3% and 4% range have disappeared altogether.

Deposit products in the 5% range, well below the base rate, have also reappeared.

With lower interest rates, the popularity of deposit products is also declining.

In March, the average balance of regular deposits increased by 2.3 trillion won, the smallest increase in 4 months.

This rapid drop in deposit rates is largely due to the fact that the procession of raising the benchmark interest rate has stopped, and market interest rates such as bank bonds have fallen.

[Seok Byung-hoon/Professor of Economics, Ewha Womans University: We are preemptively predicting a cut in the benchmark interest rate by about 2.22 percentage points in the fourth quarter, and reflecting this, the market rate is falling first, so the deposit rate is trending down.]

In addition, the continued pressure from the financial authorities to cut lending rates is also a factor in lowering deposit rates.

As the Bank of Korea froze its benchmark interest rate for the second consecutive time, the market is predicting that the benchmark interest rate hike has actually ended.

The trend of paying off debt at high interest rates also faltered, and bank household lending also rebounded in April.

(Video Interview: Han Il-il, Video Editing: Choi Eun-jin)