Second month of strong manufacturing growth for Singapore

SINGAPORE — Singapore’s manufacturing sector saw a 12.1 per cent on-year growth in last month’s output, the latest data released today (April 25) by the Economic Development Board showed, as all key industries recorded robust expansion last month.

This marks the second straight month of double digit growth, following the revised 13.1 per cent jump in production in February, and comes as economists anticipate a moderately positive economic outlook this year.

Output in the key electronics cluster — which accounts for over 30 per cent of the Republic’s manufacturing — grew for the 11th consecutive month by 8.7 per cent on-year, on the back of a 14.1 per cent growth in the semiconductors segment.

Pharmaceuticals’ output rose 19.4 per cent on-year last month to push the overall biomedical output up by 16.4 per cent. With this, the volatile biomedical sector has secured a full quarter of solid growth following last year’s choppy performance.

Meanwhile, output of the transport engineering and chemicals clusters improved by 29.4 per cent and 5.2 per cent respectively last month. The precision engineering sector also performed better, growing output by 4.3 per cent on-year.

Despite the ongoing recovery of manufacturing’s performance, exports volume has lagged behind production output, as Singapore saw a surprise 6.6 per cent drop in non-oil domestic exports in March.

Economists have remained optimistic about the outlook, but noted that it may take some time before demand for products made in Singapore gains traction with the improving external conditions.

Correction: The article originally stated that Singapore saw a surprise 6.6 per cent drop in non-oil domestic exports in February. This is incorrect. Singapore saw the drop in March. We apologise for the error. This story was updated on April 25 at 4.45pm.