Singapore's non-oil domestic exports plunge 9.9% in January

SINGAPORE'S non-oil domestic exports (NODX) started the year with a 9.9 per cent plunge, extending the 7.2 per cent dive in December 2015.

The year-on-year drop in the NODX in January was reflected in a decline in shipments to all the top 10 markets, with the exception of the European Union and Malaysia, figures released by trade promotion agency International Enterprise Singapore show. China, Taiwan and Hong Kong were the top contributors to NODX's fall.

Month on month, the NODX posted a seasonally adjusted 0.7 per cent rise, against the 2.6 per cent decrease in December - thanks to "an expansion in electronic NODX which outweighed the decline in non-electronic NODX".

But the electronic NODX dipped 0.6 per cent year on year last month, after a 0.3 per cent drop in December - due largely to plunges in NODX shipments of integrated circuits (-15 per cent), personal-computer parts (-8.8 per cent) and disk drives (-23.3 per cent). Non-electronic NODX fell 13.9 per cent, against the 10.3 per cent drop in December.

Non-oil re-exports slipped 12 per cent last month, reversing the 0.8 per cent rise in December.