Barging blindly into Singapore’s construction boom could be a bust for some investors

FOR years, Singapore’s construction sector was the proverbial “ugly duckling” of the local bourse – a messy, low-margin business plagued by labour crunches, fluctuating raw material costs, and the lingering hangover of pandemic-era delays.

Investors, quite reasonably, preferred the steady dividends of the banks or the defensive allure of Singapore-listed real estate investment trusts (S-Reits).

But look at the scoreboard now, and the narrative has shifted with the speed of a high-rise crane.