Singapore, 14 Feb 2018 – Manufacturing continued to power Singapore’s economic growth in the final quarter of 2017, even as the services sector picked up momentum.
Manufacturing, which makes up a fifth of the economy, grew 4.8% year on year in Q4, revised down from earlier advance estimates of 6.2% year on year.
This was also a sharp slowdown from the 19.1% seen in the preceding quarter.
In Q4, growth in manufacturing was primarily driven by the electronics and precision engineering clusters, which continued to grow on the back of healthy demand for semiconductors. However, the sector’s overall performance was dragged down by the transport engineering and biomedical engineering clusters, which saw weakness in the marine and offshore engineering segment as well as pharmaceuticals.
On a quarter-on-quarter seasonally adjusted annualised basis, the manufacturing sector contracted by 14.8%, a pullback from the 34.9% expansion in the preceding quarter.
But even as manufacturing growth eased, the services sector looks poised to make up for lost ground.
Services grew 3.5% in the fourth quarter, revised up from earlier estimates of 3% year on year.
The construction sector remained lacklustre, shrinking by 5% on a year-on-year basis, easing from the 9.3% contraction in Q3. The contraction was mostly due to the weakness in private sector construction works.
For the whole of 2017, manufacturing was the key growth driver. It expanded 10.1%, accelerating from the 3.7% growth in 2016.
Services grew by 2.8% in 2017, up from 1.4% in 2016.
Construction had a dismal year as it contracted by 8.4%, a reversal from the 1.9% growth in 2016.
BT
