Singapore's domestic wholesale trade growth eases again to 11.3% in Q3

SINGAPORE'S domestic wholesale trade expanded by 11.3 per cent in the September quarter, compared with the same period a year ago, slowing from growth of 18.5 per cent in the second quarter and 23.5 per cent in the first three months of the year.

Quarter on quarter, this trade dropped by 3.7 per cent.

Excluding petroleum, domestic wholesale trade rose by a smaller 2.7 per cent from a year ago, according to Department of Statistics data released on Monday. Quarter on quarter, it declined 0.9 per cent.

After adjusting for price changes, overall domestic wholesale trade rose by 1.3 per cent from a year ago, but fell by 5.6 per cent from the previous quarter.

On a year-on-year basis, domestic sales of petroleum & petroleum products, ship chandlers & bunkering and chemicals & chemical products industries expanded by 23.0 per cent, 20.9 per cent and 0.2 per cent respectively in the third quarter, due primarily to increases in prices of petroleum and chemical products.

After removing the price effect, the volume of domestic sales for the petroleum & petroleum products industry saw a smaller increase of 3.0 per cent while the chemicals & chemical products and ship chandlers & bunkering industries contracted by 11.5 per cent and 0.7 per cent respectively.

Year-on-year growth in domestic sales was also reported in the general wholesale trade (13.8 per cent), electronic components (3.2 per cent), transport equipment (2.6 per cent), metals, timber & construction materials (2.3 per cent) and industrial & construction machinery (2.0 per cent).

The telecommunications & computers industry saw flat year-on-year performance in the third quarter.

The household equipment & furniture and food, beverages & tobacco industries suffered year-on-year drops in domestic sales of 29.8 per cent and 5.2 per cent respectively.

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