According to the flash estimates released by the Ministry of Trade and Industry on Thursday, there’s a 0.7 percent increase in Singapore’s economy in 2019. MIT has estimated the country’s economic growth to be between 0.5 percent and 1 percent.
This figure is better than the predicted number by analysts at Bloomberg which is 0.6 percent. Though, unfortunately, this increase is way lower than the 3.1 percent expansion in 2018.
In the fourth quarter, the economy has grown by 0.8 percent year on year. That’s in contrast with the revised increase of 0.7 percent in the previous quarter. This prediction mirrors the projections of private-sector economists.
If you’re to look at the country’s growth this year through a quarter-on-quarter seasonally-adjusted annualized basis, the economy has increased marginally slow, at a pace of 0.1 percent in contrast with the growth noted in the third quarter.
The head of treasury research and strategy at OCBC Bank, Ms. Selena Ling, says that these numbers indicate that the economy of the country dipped in the second quarter of 2019. However, she shares that there are positives to be taken away from this occurrence.
Escape From Recession
Singapore was able to avoid a technical recession as well as a full-year recession, which experts feared had the possibility of happening at the beginning of the year.
This 2020, Ms. Ling draws attention to the services and construction sectors as the bright spots for the economy. She adds that a big chunk of the domestic labor market, coupled with the public sector improving infrastructures in the education, health and social services department, remains as the key supporting pillars.
This February, the MTI will release the final growth figures for the fourth quarter and the entirety of 2019. These include numbers on the economic performance by sectors, productivity, and sources of growth, inflation, employment.