Singapore's GDP growth goes up

Singapore's economy posted a better-than-expected performance in the second quarter (Q2) this year, up 3.7 percent year on year, showed the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) advance estimates released Friday.

This is much better than the 0.2 percent growth recorded in the preceding quarter, reported Xinhua.

A survey conducted by the city-state's central bank, Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), last month showed that private sector economists and analysts expected the Singapore economy to grow by 1.5 percent in Q2, down from 2 percent during last survey.

The median forecast for the whole year also graded down from 2.8 percent in March survey to 2.3 percent. The MTI has said it expected the Singapore economy to grow by 1 to 3 percent this year.

According to the advance estimates Friday, on a quarter-on-quarter seasonally-adjusted annualized basis, the economy grew by 15.2 percent, much faster than the 1.8 percent growth in the previous quarter.

In particular, the manufacturing sector performed best with a year-on-year expansion of 1.1 percent in Q2, reversing the contraction of 6.9 percent in Q1. The sector grew at an annualized rate of 37.6 percent compared with Q1. It is improved from the contraction of 12.7 percent on quarter in the preceding quarter.

"The sharp rebound largely reflected the strong growth in the output of the biomedical manufacturing and electronics clusters," the MTI said in a statement.