GDP expands 2.8% in This autumn, 1.2% for 2023

Singapore’s economy grew 2.8% year-on-year within the closing quarter of 2023, in accordance with advance estimates from the nation’s Ministry of Commerce and Trade on Tuesday.

This was a pointy enhance from the 1% enlargement recorded within the third quarter, and the quickest price of progress because the third quarter of 2022.

On a quarter-on-quarter seasonally-adjusted foundation, the financial system grew 1.7%, a bigger enlargement than the 1.3% within the third quarter.

For the yr 2023, the financial system grew by 1.2%, a slower tempo from the three.6% progress in 2022. This was in step with the MTI’s expectations, which forecast the financial system to develop “around 1%” in November.

In his New 12 months’s message on Jan. 1, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said the nation “avoided a recession” in 2023. Lee described the yr as “challenging,” citing a “troubled” worldwide surroundings, such because the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, in addition to tensions between the U.S. and China.

He added that regardless of this, “households are still feeling the pressure of higher cost of living, though inflation is gradually coming down.”

Singapore narrowly prevented a technical recession in 2023 after recording a 0.1% quarter-on-quarter progress within the second quarter, following a 0.3% contraction within the first quarter. A technical recession is usually outlined as two straight quarters of GDP contraction.

Most notably, Singapore’s manufacturing sector, which includes about 20% of its financial system and the nation’s largest sector, expanded by 3.2% year-on-year within the fourth quarter, reversing from the 4.7% contraction within the earlier quarter.

The manufacturing sector had recorded consecutive year-on-year declines within the first three quarters of 2023, earlier than the turnaround within the closing quarter.

The ministry mentioned “growth in the sector was due to output expansions across all clusters, with the exception of the precision engineering cluster.”

In November, MTI forecast that Singapore’s GDP will see an expansion of about 1% to 3% in 2024, including that main world economies just like the U.S. will possible sluggish within the first half of the yr, earlier than choosing up step by step within the second half of the yr.