Singapore’s economic growth last quarter quickened to the fastest pace in more than three years, as manufacturing and services rebounded.
GDP rose an annualized 9.1 percent in the three months to December from the previous quarter, when it declined a revised 1.9 percent, the Singaporean Ministry of Trade said in a statement yesterday. The median estimate of nine economists in a Bloomberg survey was for a 4 percent expansion.
On an annual basis, GDP rose 1.8 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, compared with the 0.3 percent median estimate in a Bloomberg survey.
The economy expanded 1.8 percent last year, the slowest pace since 2009, ministry figures showed.
Singapore, among Asia’s most-export dependent nations, is seeking new growth engines to boost incomes as its population ages and trade falters.
With global growth under pressure and the US threatening to turn more protectionist under president-elect Donald Trump, the outlook remains cloudy. That will be a consideration for the central bank in its April policy review after it signaled in October it would stick to its neutral currency policy for an extended period of time.
“Overall, we are not doing badly, considering the global economic uncertainties,” Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) said in a New Year message on Saturday. “While the labor market has eased, unemployment remains low and we are still creating new jobs.”
“I still think Singapore is in a very challenging condition,” said Edward Lee, regional head of research at Standard Chartered PLC in Singapore, who expects growth this year to slow to 1.4 percent.
“External conditions remain extremely challenging and we certainly have to be watchful for materialization of anti-globalization and anti-trade sentiment. Any materialization of that will further dampen the already very weak global trade conditions,” Lee said.
“For now, my forecast is that there will be no further easing in April,” he said, referring to monetary policy.
“Prospects of a more protectionist trade policy would be negative for Singapore,” which is wedded to the old export model and this will have a knock-on impact on domestic incomes, said Weiwen Ng, an economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd in Singapore. “Domestic demand weakness should continue to weigh on an already subdued labor market.”
The services industry, which accounts for about two-thirds of the economy, rose an annualized 9.4 percent in the fourth quarter from the previous three months. Manufacturing jumped an annualized 14.6 percent.
The advance GDP estimates for the fourth quarter are computed largely from data in the first two months of the quarter, and are subject to revision when more comprehensive data become available.
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