Singapore economy grew 2.4% y-o-y in Q3, under market expectations

THE Singapore economy performed slightly worse than expected in the third quarter of 2014, growing 2.4 per cent from a year ago, according to advance estimates released by the Ministry of Trade and Industry on Tuesday morning.

This fell short of the 2.7 per cent median year-on-year growth forecast of 19 private-sector economists polled by Bloomberg prior to the data release, but kept pace with growth in Q2.

After seasonal adjustments and on an annualised basis, the economy grew 1.2 per cent, a turnaround from the 0.1 per cent contraction in the previous quarter. This was better than the annualised 0.8 per cent median growth forecast of 12 market economists.

Manufacturing grew 1.4 per cent year-on-year, supported by the biomedical and electronics clusters. Growth in the services sector picked up slightly to 2.9 per cent year-on-year, boosted by the finance & insurance and business services segments. Construction's growth moderated to 1.4 per cent year-on-year, from 4.1 per cent the previous quarter, due to weaker private sector construction activities.