Singapore’s economy contracts in Q1 of 2017

According to the data from the Ministry of Trade and Industry, the Singaporean economy contracted by 1.9% in the first quarter of 2017 on a quarterly basis. The latest figure is well below the revised 12.3% growth recorded in Q4. On a yearly basis, the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) increased by 2.5% in Q1 compared to the 2.9% expansion in the previous three months.

The latest data showed that Singapore’s manufacturing activity rose by 6.6% in Q1 on a yearly basis following an 11.5% increase in the previous quarter, driven by the rise in electronics and precision engineering clusters although the biomedical manufacturing, the transport engineering and general manufacturing still continued to shrink. On a quarterly basis, however, the manufacturing sector posted a serious decrease of 6.6% in the Q1 after a surge of 39.8% in the previous quarter.

Services sector activity also rose slightly by 1.5% in Q1 year-on-year compared to the 1% expansion in the previous quarter mainly on the back of the transportation and storage sectors as well as the wholesale and retail trade. On a quarterly basis, meanwhile, the services sector shrank by 2.2% after an expansion of 8.4% in the previous quarter.

Also, the construction sector posted a further decrease of 1.1% year-on-year in Q1, following a drop of 2.8% in Q4 of 2016 due to a slowdown in private sector construction activities while it expanded by 5.4% quarter-on-quarter following a small rise of 0.8% in Q4 of 2016.

The Ministry of Trade and Industry states that the GDP estimates for the first quarter of 2017 are largely from the data for the first two months of the year and that they are only an early indication of the GDP results and they may be revised when more data is available.