According to Ministry of Trade and Industry’s (MTI) Gross Domestic Product advance estimates for the fourth quarter of 2017, the construction sector continued its decline from a 7.7 contraction in the previous quarter to 8.5 on a year-on-year basis. This was largely attributed to the slowing private sector construction activities.
With an expansion of 3 per cent, services producing industries performed well, with growth primarily driven by finance and insurance, wholesale and retail trade, and transportation and storage sectors. On quarter-on-quarter seasonally-adjusted annualised basis, the sector expanded at the rate of 7.5 per cent, faster than the 3.4 per cent growth in the third quarter.
Thanks to a lift from the electronics and precision engineering clusters, the manufacturing sector expanded by 6.2 per cent on a year-on-year basis in the fourth quarter. The output declines in the biomedical manufacturing and transport engineering clusters have however, made a deep dent to its 19.2 per cent growth in the previous quarter.
The Singapore economy grew by 3.1 per cent year-on-year, easing from the 5.4 per cent growth in the previous quarter. On a quarter-on-quarter seasonally-adjusted annualised basis, the economy expanded at a slower pace of 2.8 per cent compared to the 9.4 per cent growth in the preceding quarter. Overall, the economy reported a growth of 3.5 per cent for the whole year, in line with MTI’s earlier forecast of 3 to 3.5 per cent.