Manufacturing Sector Lead Singapore’s Economic Growth

The data from the Ministry of Trade and Industry showed that manufacturing remained to be the major component to expand the economic growth of Singapore in the first quarter, while the services industry appears to have further improvement as well.

The growth of the manufacturing sector last year was 9.8 percent in Q1 versus a year earlier, the figure shows a higher growth by 4.8 percent in the previous quarter. It was also influenced mainly by electronics, precision engineering, and chemicals clusters.

Based on a seasonally adjusted quarterly rate, the sector grew by 22.1 percent which shows a reversal from 14.8 percent decline in the previous quarter. On the other hand, the services sector makes up two-thirds of Singapore’s economy also increased by 4.1 percent compared to 3.5 percent in the last quarter of 2017. This industry was reinforced by information and communications, finance and insurance, wholesale and retail trade sectors. Also, services were highly anticipated to beat manufacturing as the primary growth driver of the current year.