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S Koreans to pay more for electricity

Seoul - South Korea announced Tuesday it would raise electricity prices this week by an average 5.4%, in an attempt to curb rising power demand amid fears of blackouts.

"Our country's electricity consumption is not only higher than those of other major countries, but it is growing at a much faster rate than had been anticipated," the country's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said.

Domestic electricity tariffs have been kept at a minimum, even as prices of other energy sources such as oil and gas have climbed, it said.

The government of Asia's fourth-largest economy has maintained electricity prices at relatively low levels in recent years, in an effort to help large exporters produce at lower cost and control inflation.

Starting from Thursday, the average electricity tariff for households will be raised by 2.7%, while that for industry will rise by 6.4% and for large office buildings by 5.8%, according to the ministry.

It forecast that the planned rate hike would raise the country's consumer prices by 0.056 percentage points and the producer prices by 0.161 percentage points.

The last increase was in January, when electricity rates were raised by 4% on average.

The ministry also announced that it would newly impose taxes on the use of coal in power plants and cut taxes on liquefied natural gas and kerosene.

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