Singapore May Slip Into Recession
The Rakyat Post: The surprise economic contraction for Singapore in the second quarter saw the trade-reliant economy’s currency crumble to a one-month low today – with at least one analyst warning that the grim data raised the risk of a technical recession.
Sluggish global demand and government restrictions on foreign labour knocked the manufacturing sector, raising the prospect of further monetary easing later this year.
Gross domestic product shrank 4.6% in the second quarter from the previous three months on an annualised and seasonally adjusted basis, pressured by the manufacturing sector contracting 14% on quarter, advance estimates from the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) showed today.
“We cannot rule out a technical recession,” said Hak Bin Chua, economist at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, who along with a few other analysts expects the government to downgrade its full-year 2-4% growth forecast.
The second quarter slump was in sharp contrast to a revised 4.2% expansion clocked in the first quarter and the 0.8% growth picked in a Reuters poll.
Some economists said the poor GDP reading could stoke expectations for the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to ease its exchange-rate based monetary policy at its October policy review, especially after annual core inflation hit a five-year low of 0.1% in May.
“With an already weak inflation backdrop, a little bit of MAS easing expectation may creep back into the market,” said Jonathan Cavenagh, senior FX strategist for Westpac.
The Singapore dollar slumped to a one-month low of to 1.3622 versus the US dollar soon after the GDP report, its lowest level since June 8.
Singapore’s manufacturing sector took the brunt of the downturn in the second quarter, driven by a fall in output in the biomedical and transport engineering clusters.
Erratic global demand led by a slowdown in China – a major market for Singapore – and a years-long government policy restricting foreign workers have hurt private investment and business expansion, analysts say.
Indeed, the services sector also shrank 2.6% on-quarter, in a rare contraction for the sector.
