Dismal start to 2015 for manufacturing

Singapore

IT was a slow and disappointing start to 2015 for Singapore's manufacturing sector, which grew less than expected in January despite an undemanding year-ago base. The surprisingly weak showing was due to a broad-based, uninspiring performance across all industrial clusters, save biomedical manufacturing and precision engineering.

Factory output rose just 0.9 per cent in January on a year-on-year basis, far lower than the market's consensus forecast of a 3.3 per cent increase. Strip out the volatile biomedical cluster, and the result would have been even worse: a zero-growth outcome with unchanged output.

With February's factory output expected to be weak on Chinese New Year plant closures, private-sector economists now say Q1 GDP growth is …