KONTAN.CO.ID - SINGAPORE. Singapore's economy performed badly in the second quarter, with the slowest annual growth in a decade and sharp shrinkage from the previous three months as the manufacturing sector continued to decline, preliminary data showed on Friday. From a year earlier, gross domestic product (GDP) expanded 0.1% in the second quarter, well below the 1.1% forecast in a Reuters poll and the revised 1.1% growth for January-March. This is the slowest year-on-year GDP growth since the second quarter of 2009, when it fell 1.2%.
On a quarterly, seasonally adjusted and annualised basis, GDP shrank 3.4% in April-June from the previous three months, the Ministry of Trade and Industry said in an emailed statement. A Reuters poll had forecast a marginal on quarter expansion of 0.1%. In the first quarter, GDP expanded 3.8% from the previous quarter. This is the biggest quarterly contraction in nearly seven years, since a 4.1% fall in the third quarter of 2012 from the quarter earlier on a seasonally adjusted and annualised basis. The second quarter flash numbers are "quite disastrous... way below even the worst street forecasts," said Selena Ling, head of treasury and strategy at OCBC Bank, adding that the main drag remains manufacturing. In the second quarter, manufacturing contracted 3.8% from a year earlier after shrinking 0.4% in the quarter earlier. Singapore authorities have previously said they will review their 2019 full-year GDP growth of 1.5%-2.5%, and some analysts say there might be a recession in 2020. Ling said she expects authorities to soon lower full-year growth forecasts to 0.5-1.5%.
