Services rely on growth in manufacturing, but it doesn't cut both ways

Singapore

THE manufacturing and services sectors have served as the twin engines fuelling Singapore's economic growth, but the development of the services sector has typically been more reliant on the growth of the manufacturing sector than the other way around.

The manufacturing sector creates more jobs and fosters more economic spillovers to the services sector than the converse, said a report by lead economist Kuan Ming Leong from the Ministry of Trade and Industry's Economics Division.

Therefore, the loss of manufacturing capabilities is harder to restore as the sector does not benefit significantly from a thriving services-centric economy, he noted in the…