Twin engines of growth sputter in Q3 with sequential declines

Singapore

SINGAPORE'S twin engines of growth - the services and manufacturing sectors - floundered spectacularly in the third quarter of 2016, leaving the market aghast and prompting a round of forecast cuts.

Together, the two sectors pulled overall gross domestic product squarely into contractionary territory, marking a 4.1 per cent decline on a seasonally adjusted quarter-on-quarter annualised basis.

This was a reversal from the annualised 0.2 per cent growth seen in the preceding quarter, and stood i…