Singapore’s factory output contracts at slower pace in June, beating expectations

SINGAPORE’S factory output fell 4.9 per cent year on year in June, contracting at a slower rate than a month ago as the electronics segment recorded a smaller decline, data from the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) showed on Wednesday (Jul 26).

Excluding the biomedical cluster, which is typically volatile, factory output fell 5.2 per cent year on year in June.

While June’s output data marked nine straight months of contraction, it was still lower than May’s revised figure of a 10.5 per cent decline, and better than the 6 per cent contraction that private-sector economists polled by Bloomberg were expecting.