Singapore’s economy grew more than initially estimated last quarter as demand for the city-state’s exports improved amid a recovery in the US.
GDP rose an annualized 3.2 percent in the three months through March from the previous quarter, the Singaporean Ministry of Trade and Industry said in a statement yesterday, compared with an estimate last month of 1.1 percent.
The median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey was 2 percent.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the central bank, held back from further monetary policy easing last month and the trade ministry yesterday said global growth is expected to “improve marginally” this year.
“There isn’t a great impetus for easing,” said Vishnu Varathan, a Singapore-based economist at Mizuho Bank Ltd. “Things look slightly more upbeat. Oil prices are stabilizing higher and so I think the MAS will retain policy where it is, without further easing, unless we see a fresh and unexpected negative shock.”
Singapore’s economy expanded 2.6 percent in the first quarter from the previous year, after growing 2.1 percent in the previous three months, the trade ministry said. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey was for a 2.2 percent gain.
The government reiterated its forecast of 2 percent to 4 percent growth this year.
Tempering Singapore’s growth outlook is industrial production. Data released yesterday showed factory output last month fell the most since February 2013.
The MAS, which uses the Singaporean dollar to manage price pressure, said on April 14 it would maintain a modest and gradual appreciation of the local currency without adjusting the pace of its moves. The central bank unexpectedly eased monetary policy in January.
The monetary policy stance remains appropriate and unchanged, with no material change to the inflation outlook, MAS Deputy Managing Director Jacqueline Loh (羅惠燕) said at a briefing yesterday.
Consumer prices fell last month for a sixth straight month.
Singapore’s manufacturing rose 0.2 percent in the first quarter from the previous three months, compared with an initial estimate of a 2.3 percent drop.
Construction jumped 12.9 percent and services gained 2.1 percent.
Slower manufacturing gains were primarily due to a decline in the output of transport engineering, electronics and biomedical manufacturing, the ministry said.
Accommodation and food services were hurt by fewer visitors arriving, it said.
“Given the expected improvement in global economic conditions in 2015, externally-oriented sectors such as wholesale trade, and finance and insurance, are likely to see improved growth prospects,” the ministry said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to