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Friday, September 25, 2020 – 1:01 pm
SINGAPORE’s factory output soared a surprising 13.7 percent year-on-year in August, led by strong growth in electronics, according to figures from the Singapore Economic Development Board on Friday.
Far exceeding economists’ expectations for growth of 2.2 percent, the latest figure was a rebound from the 7.6 percent decline in July, which had come as a result of a strong base effect.
Excluding the volatile biomedical group, industrial production increased 15.3 percent. On a seasonally adjusted monthly basis, industrial production increased 13.9 percent in August, or 4.8 percent excluding biomedical manufacturing.
The electronics group posted the strongest result by far, with production increasing 44.2 percent year-on-year. This was primarily due to 56.9 percent growth in the semiconductor segment, supported by demand for cloud services, data centers and the 5G market. With the August figure, the production of electronic products during the first eight months of the year increased 4.1 percent over the previous year period.
The precision engineering group recorded production growth of 9.4 percent, led by the machinery and systems segment, which grew 17 percent thanks to higher production of semiconductor equipment.
Biomedical manufacturing production increased 8.4%, with growth in both medical technology and pharmaceuticals. The group has had the strongest performance so far this year so far, up 18% compared to the prior year period.
Chemicals production rose 3.1 percent, and gains in the specialty and petrochemical segments more than offset declines in oil and other chemicals. So far this year, the cluster’s production is down 4.1 percent from the prior year period.
Two groups saw production drop in August. Overall manufacturing production contracted 18.6 percent, with declines in all segments.
Transportation engineering production fell 36 percent, with the aerospace segment declining 34 percent and the marine and offshore engineering segment 50.7 percent, as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to keep activity down in these industries. The transportation engineering group has had the worst performance during the first eight months, 22.2% less year-on-year.
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