Singapore economy grows in Q2 as manufacturing rebounds

Singapore's economy grew 15.2 percent in the second quarter from the previous three-month period, the government said on Friday, powered by a strong rebound in manufacturing as global demand picked up. The growth in the gross domestic product (GDP) for the three months to June was a sharp increase from the 1.8 percent quarter-on-quarter expansion in the January-March period. Manufacturing, which had been slumping because of a global economic slowdown, soared 37.6 percent quarter-on-quarter, reversing a 12.7 percent fall in the preceding three months. "The sharp rebound largely reflected the strong growth in the output of the biomedical and electronics clusters," the trade ministry said in a statement. Electronics and biomedicals -- largely pharmaceutical products -- are pillars of the all-important manufacturing sector in Singapore's trade-reliant economy, which is dependent on exports to the world market. Like many other Asian economies, Singapore exports had suffered after demand from key markets like the United States and Europe took a dent as these markets grappled with their own economic problems. Compared with the same period the previous year, Singapore's GDP rose 3.7 percent in the second quarter, accelerating from the 0.2 percent expansion in the first quarter, the trade ministry said in a statement. The second-quarter figures released on Friday are mostly computed from data in the first two months of the period. Singapore releases these advance estimates to give an early gauge of the economy's quarterly performance. Full figures will be issued in August. The construction sector, which had taken up the slack from manufacturing, grew 9.0 percent quarter-on-quarter, down from a 14.3 percent growth in the preceding three months. Services were up 9.0 percent quarter-on-quarter, faster than the 8.1 percent growth in the earlier quarter.