Sharpest manufacturing plunge in over two years points to weak Q2 GDP
Some economists even expect Q2's numbers to be weaker than Q1's
IT WOULD be easy to blame April's 8.7 per cent plunge in industrial output - the steepest year-on-year decline in more than two years - on the volatile pharmaceuticals sector's 38 per cent contraction.
But economists say that weakness showed up in other manufacturing clusters too, confirming what April's purchasing managers' index (PMI) had suggested: Singapore's economy has had a weak start in Q2. Some now believe that GDP for the current quarter could shrink from Q1's levels - which were revised higher on Tuesday.
Lower production of active pharmaceutical ingredients and biological products led the pharma segment to shed close to two-fifths of last April's high output base; this outweighed the medical technology segment's robust 28.1 per cent growth and dragged overall output from the biomedical cluster 28.6 per cent lower year-on-year.
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