US woes to slow Singapore economy this year
Saturday, January 26, 2008
SINGAPORE'S economic growth will slow down to as low as 4.5 per cent this year due to uncertainty over the US economy, its Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong told Reuters yesterday.
"We see it coming off. We had 7.5 per cent last year, this year we forecast somewhere between 4.5 and 6.5 per cent. Obviously there is some uncertainty because we don't know how the US economy will perform and it will affect us," Lee said.
Lee said Singapore's sovereign wealth funds are commercially-driven and pursue long-term returns. "(Our policy is) not to make bold and exciting moves, but move cautiously and preserve the value, invest commercially for long-term sustainable returns."
He brushed off suggestions that sovereign wealth funds lacked transparency, saying Singapore's sovereign wealth funds the GIC and Temasek were transparent in their disclosures. "We are quite open about what we do," he said.
Singapore's manufacturing output contracted for the second month in a row in December after a big drop in pharmaceuticals production, government data showed yesterday.
Industrial output fell 1.7 per cent last month compared with a year earlier, sharper than the revised 0.5 per cent shrinkage in November, figures from the Economic Development Board (EDB) showed.
On a seasonally-adjusted month-on-month basis, production declined at a preliminary 4.7 per cent, after a gain of 6.4 per cent in November.
Despite the year-end contraction, manufacturing output a closely watched indicator for Singapore's trade-reliant economy was up 5.8 per cent for the whole of 2007 over the previous year.
The decline in December, which was within analysts' forecasts, was due to a sharp production fall in the volatile biomedicals cluster, which covers pharmaceuticals and medical technology, EDB said.
Production of active pharmaceutical ingredients plunged 36 per cent as plants were shut down for maintenance and a different product mix was introduced, while medical technology declined 18 per cent as equipment deliveries to the US market decreased, it said.
"Growth recorded by the other clusters was offset by a decline in the biomedical manufacturing cluster," EDB said.
Song Seng Wun, a regional economist with CIMB-GK Research in Singapore, said that if biomedicals were excluded, manufacturing output in December would have risen 7.3 per cent.
AFP, Reuters
"We see it coming off. We had 7.5 per cent last year, this year we forecast somewhere between 4.5 and 6.5 per cent. Obviously there is some uncertainty because we don't know how the US economy will perform and it will affect us," Lee said.
Lee said Singapore's sovereign wealth funds are commercially-driven and pursue long-term returns. "(Our policy is) not to make bold and exciting moves, but move cautiously and preserve the value, invest commercially for long-term sustainable returns."
He brushed off suggestions that sovereign wealth funds lacked transparency, saying Singapore's sovereign wealth funds the GIC and Temasek were transparent in their disclosures. "We are quite open about what we do," he said.
Singapore's manufacturing output contracted for the second month in a row in December after a big drop in pharmaceuticals production, government data showed yesterday.
Industrial output fell 1.7 per cent last month compared with a year earlier, sharper than the revised 0.5 per cent shrinkage in November, figures from the Economic Development Board (EDB) showed.
On a seasonally-adjusted month-on-month basis, production declined at a preliminary 4.7 per cent, after a gain of 6.4 per cent in November.
Despite the year-end contraction, manufacturing output a closely watched indicator for Singapore's trade-reliant economy was up 5.8 per cent for the whole of 2007 over the previous year.
The decline in December, which was within analysts' forecasts, was due to a sharp production fall in the volatile biomedicals cluster, which covers pharmaceuticals and medical technology, EDB said.
Production of active pharmaceutical ingredients plunged 36 per cent as plants were shut down for maintenance and a different product mix was introduced, while medical technology declined 18 per cent as equipment deliveries to the US market decreased, it said.
"Growth recorded by the other clusters was offset by a decline in the biomedical manufacturing cluster," EDB said.
Song Seng Wun, a regional economist with CIMB-GK Research in Singapore, said that if biomedicals were excluded, manufacturing output in December would have risen 7.3 per cent.
AFP, Reuters
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