Singapore’s Exports Decline on Electronics, Drugs
Singapore’s exports fell the most in more than six years in November as weakening orders for electronics and drugs from developed and emerging markets led to the longest slump in overseas sales since 2002.
Non-oil domestic exports dropped 17.5 percent from a year earlier, after contracting a revised 15.4 percent in October, the trade promotion agency said in a statement today. Economists had expected a 14.5 percent decline. Total exports, including oil shipments and re-exports, fell 11.8 percent.
The city-state’s economy has contracted for two straight quarters, the first recession since 2002, and retrenchments are rising as manufacturers lay off workers, prompting the government to move forward its 2009 budget announcement to next month. The World Bank last week predicted international trade will shrink in 2009 for the first time in more than 25 years.
“There is very little, if anything, that the government can do to improve external demand in this kind of environment,” said Alvin Liew, an economist at Standard Chartered Plc in Singapore. “We’re seeing the same thing across Asia.”
Singapore’s economic growth this year may miss the government’s forecast of 2.5 percent as the global economy worsens amid a credit crisis, Trade Minister Lim Hng Kiang said yesterday.
“We are looking at a very difficult trade environment,” Lim said payday loans for bad credit. Singapore expects overseas shipments to fall as much as 7 percent this year, and decline by as much as 1 percent in 2009. Economists are more pessimistic, forecasting exports to slide 9 percent next year, a central bank survey showed.
Electronics Fall
Exports dropped a seasonally adjusted 2.8 percent last month from October, when they fell a revised 7.5 percent, the report showed. Economists had expected a 5 percent decline.
Electronics shipments slipped 17.3 percent in November from a year earlier, the 22nd consecutive drop, following a revised 15.2 percent decline in October. Sales of electronics products by companies including Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd. were worth S$4.9 billion ($3.4 billion) last month.
Chartered, the world’s third-largest maker of customized chips, last week said it expects to post its biggest loss in 15 quarters in the three months ending Dec. 31 as customers delay orders amid a global recession.
Non-electronics shipments, which include petrochemicals and pharmaceuticals, fell 17.6 percent in November from a year earlier. Pharmaceutical shipments plunged 48.1 percent last month.
Filed under: term by Wolf