STI dips 0.42% on worries over region's rising Covid-19 cases

SINGAPORE shares closed lower on Thursday amid an uptick in Covid-19 cases locally due to a growing KTV cluster as well as around the region, snubbing better-than-expected China gross domestic product (GDP) growth and dovish remarks by the US central bank chief to calm inflation jitters.

The key Straits Times Index fell 13.17 points or 0.42 per cent to finish at 3,139.98 - down for the second straight day - following a flat showing overnight on Wall Street.

Key gauges of major Asia-Pacific markets fared mixed. Japan and Australia fell 1.2 per cent and 0.3 per cent respectively while main indices in Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, South Korea and Taiwan advanced.

Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said the economy is "a ways off" from where it needs to be for the central bank to change policy, soothing worries that the Fed could tighten sooner following the recent release of hot inflation data out of the US.

Latest GDP data indicated that China's economy grew 1.3 per cent quarter-on-quarter in Q2 - "a modest acceleration from the downward revised 0.4 per cent in the previous quarter and slightly above consensus and our expectations", said Julius Baer economist Sophie Altermatt, adding that June's economic activity, particularly retail sales and private investment, showed solid growth and surprised expectations to the upside.

Turnover in the local bourse came in at 1.42 billion units worth S$993.15 million. Losers outnumbered gainers with 241 counters down and 238 up. Singapore's three banks OCBC, DBS and UOB as well as Singtel and SIA led the losses in the local bourse.

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Parkway Life Real Estate Investment Trust (Reit) jumped 10 Singapore cents or 2.10 per cent to close at a 52-week high of S$4.87 on news the day before that its trustee has signed new master lease agreements with IHH Healthcare Berhad - Asia's largest private hospital operator - for the latter's hospitals in Singapore.

It is the "deal of the decade", said DBS Group Research as the renewal of the Singapore hospitals' master lease comes with a massive 40 per cent rent increment, 27 per cent rise in net asset value and a new lease of life secured for the next two decades.

Fortress Minerals rose five Singapore cents or nearly 8 per cent to 68 Singapore cents. An iron ore boom on the back of a global economic rebound drove an over threefold increase in the Malaysian iron ore producer's quarterly net profit to US$7.2 million on the back of a nearly two-and-a-half times jump in revenue to a record US$17.3 million from a year ago.