A Reuters poll says that South Korea’s exports will drop in October for the first time in two years.

SEOULA poll released on Friday showed that South Korea’s exports probably went down in October. This would be the first time in two years that they went down. This is because the world economy is slowing down and interest rates are going up.

The median prediction of 11 economists was that the country’s exports fell 3.0% from the same month last year to October. This was after growth slowed to a nearly two-year low of 2.7% in September.

That would end a run of 23 straight months of year-over-year growth, which started in November 2020. Since the middle of 2022, the rate of growth has slowed more sharply. For the past four months, growth rates have been in the single digits.

Related: Biden says the U.S. is ready to keep talking with South Korea about EV subsidies. 

An economist at DB Financial Investment named Park Sung-woo said, “The export growth rate is expected to turn negative in October because of the continued effects of weakening global demand for goods, a downturn in the semiconductor cycle, and slower shipments to China.”

During the first 20 days of this month, exports fell by 5.5%, and sales to South Korea’s biggest trading partner, China, fell by 16.3%. This means that exports are on track to fall for a fifth straight full month.

Also, imports were expected to keep going up for the 23rd month in a row, with 7.2% growth. Still, the number would be much lower than what it was in September (18.6%), and it would be the lowest since January 2021.

Together, they would cause a trade deficit for the seventh month in a row. This would be the first annual trade deficit in 14 years and the biggest ever.

On November 1, all of the full monthly trade data will be made public.

The survey also said that the country’s annual inflation rate would stay the same at 5.6% in October, after falling for a second month in September. In July, the rate was 6.3%, which was the highest it had been in almost 24 years.

But people had different ideas about what would happen. Five of the 11 people who answered thought the inflation rate would go up; three thought it would stay the same, and the other three thought it would go down even more.

Economists thought that South Korea’s factory output would continue to go down for a third month in September, falling 0.3% on a seasonally adjusted monthly basis. This would come after a 1.8% drop in August.

Related: South Korea tells local banks to be careful with their FX liquidity.

(This story has been fixed to get rid of the word “nearly” that was used twice in the first paragraph.)