Singapore’s economy stalled in the second quarter as manufacturing slumped amid weaker global demand for the city-state’s exports.
GDP grew 0.5 percent in the April-to-June period from a year earlier, the Singaporean Trade and Industry Ministry said yesterday.
Industrial production slid 5.5 percent ,while services expanded 3.3 percent, the ministry said.
Singapore enjoyed record economic growth last year as the global economy recovered from recession and two new casino-resorts boosted tourist arrivals. GDP surged 14.5 percent last year, and the government in May said it expected growth of up to 7 percent this year after a 9.3 percent expansion in the first quarter.
However, the expansion petered out last quarter as production of electronics and pharmaceuticals dropped, the ministry said.
The economy contracted a seasonally adjusted and annualized 7.8 percent from the first quarter as manufacturing plunged 23 percent.
“The Singapore economy’s roller-coaster ride continues with a vengeance,” said Robert Prior-Wandesforde, an economist with Credit Suisse in Singapore. “The fundamentals point to a soft patch rather than anything more serious.”
Higher oil prices, a struggling Japanese economy in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake and tsunami and Europe’s ongoing debt crisis all helped dampen global economic growth in the second quarter.
China said on Wednesday that its economy grew 9.5 percent in the second quarter, slowing slightly from 9.7 percent in the previous quarter, while South Korea’s central bank yesterday left its key interest rate unchanged at 3.25 percent amid growing eurozone debt problems.
Singapore has sought in recent years to develop its tourism industry in a bid to become less dependent on manufacturing.
Along with casinos built by Las Vegas Sands and Malaysia’s Genting, a slew of flashy new malls have sprung up in the last two years on the island’s Orchard Road shopping strip, bringing in visitors from countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia and China.
The second-quarter economic data is preliminary and is compiled mostly from April and May statistics, said the ministry, which is scheduled to release complete figures next month.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts