Singapore: Green shots turned out in the manufacturing sector – UOB

Barnabas Gan, Economist at UOB Group, gives his views on the manufacturing sector in Singapore.

Key Quotes

“Singapore’s industrial production fell 0.7% y/y (+4.1% m/m sa) in December 2019. Excluding biomedical manufacturing, output fell 3.2% y/y. Manufacturing growth has also been revised to -8.9% y/y in November 2019, up from the previous estimate of -9.3%. Accounting for the latest data, manufacturing fell 2.3% in 4Q19, and averaged -1.4% in 2019.”

“Clusters such as biomedical engineering and precision engineering underpinned overall growth, although laggards included general manufacturing, transport engineering and chemicals.”

“The Singapore economy had indeed shown signs of stabilisation especially in the fourth quarter of 2019. Barring unforeseen escalation of global trade tensions in the year ahead, we remain cautiously optimistic that manufacturing could expand by 0.5% in 2020.”