Singapore key exports contract 15.6% in February in fifth straight month of decline

SINGAPORE’S key exports in February took a sharp turn for the worse sequentially, even if year-on-year decline eased relative to the previous month, data from Enterprise Singapore (EnterpriseSG) showed on Friday (Mar 17).

Non-oil domestic exports (NODX) fell 8 per cent on a seasonally-adjusted month-on-month basis in February, undoing the 0.9 per cent expansion in the month before. This is the deepest sequential contraction since September 2020.

Barclays regional economist Brian Tan said the sharp drop was broad-based and not due to the usual volatile sectors.

“Excluding exports of non-monetary gold and pharmaceuticals – which tend to be volatile – we estimate NODX fell by a much sharper 9.8 per cent month on month after seasonal adjustment in February,” he said.

Year on year, NODX declined by 15.6 per cent, an improvement from the 25 per cent tumble in January, but only a hair better than the 15.8 per cent contraction anticipated by private-sector economists polled by Bloomberg.

Both electronics and non-electronics exports shrank.

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The seasonally-adjusted value of NODX stood at S$13.3 billion in February – the lowest level in nearly four years – down from S$14.4 billion in the previous month.

The shipment of electronic products fell 26.5 per cent year on year in February, a notch lower than the previous month’s 26.8 per cent decline. This was due largely to the contraction in exports of integrated circuits, disk media products and capacitors, said EnterpriseSG.

The decline of non-electronic shipments slowed to 12.1 per cent year on year last month, easing from the 24.5 per cent contraction in January. The worst performing export categories were structures of ships and boats, petrochemicals and pharmaceuticals.

NODX to Singapore’s top 10 markets as a whole declined in February, although exports to the US, Japan and Thailand rose.

NODX to Japan posted the best improvement with a year-on-year growth of 15.2 per cent in February, up from 1.4 per cent in the month before.

This was followed by exports to the US, which grew 8.7 per cent year on year, reversing the 31.5 per cent contraction in January.

Meanwhile, exports to the eurozone tumbled 34.2 per cent year on year in February, after the previous month’s 21.4 per cent growth.

Shipments to China shrank by 11.3 per cent year on year, easing from January’s 41.1 per cent slump.

But Barclays’ Tan noted that the pickup was due mainly to non-monetary gold exports, and the data has yet to show a “significant lift” from the economic reopening there.

Concurring, UOB senior economist Alvin Liew said it is too early to call this the start of an uptrend, even as he noted that export contractions to other Asean countries have also eased.

“We continue to expect weakness in global demand on the back of further monetary policy tightening and worries about economic slowdown in the developed markets,” Liew said.

He added that high base effect will continue to work against the NODX in the first half of this year, as seen in January and February. This means that NODX may continue to decline year on year for a few more months before improving.

Overall, total trade fell by 3.7 per cent year on year in February, easing from the 10.4 per cent decrease in the previous month, as both exports and imports shrank.