Singapore October industrial output falls 0.9%

It is a sharp about-turn from September's revised growth figure of 25.6%

Janice Heng

Published Thu, Nov 26, 2020 · 09:50 PM

Singapore

SINGAPORE'S factory output fell 0.9 per cent year on year in October with a decline in electronics output and poorer biomedical performance, confounding economists' expectations of a 7.3 per cent growth, Singapore Economic Development Board figures showed on Thursday.

It was a sharp about-turn from September's revised growth figure of 25.6 per cent, which had been boosted by the volatile biomedical cluster and a strong showing by electronics.

But economists are not reading too much into October's stumble. JP Morgan analyst Ong Sin Beng sees this "blip" as more likely to be a pause than a change in trend, noting that October's Purchasing …