Singapore factory output up by 14.3% in December, taking full-year growth to 7.3%

SINGAPORE factory output was better than expected in December, as a semiconductor surge in the powerhouse electronics segment offset a decline in pharmaceuticals.

Industrial production was up by 14.3 per cent year on year, cooling from 18.7 per cent in November but handily beating the median forecast of 12 per cent in a Bloomberg poll.

Overall, full-year manufacturing rose by 7.3 per cent in 2020, according to preliminary figures from the Economic Development Board (EDB) on Tuesday.

Electronics underpinned the sterling factory performance, expanding by 41.8 per cent in December. The latest increase was fuelled by a 51 per cent rise in semiconductors, which the EDB attributed to 5G markets and a low year-ago production base.

That's even as the volatile biomedical cluster shrank by 13.2 per cent, on lower production of biological products in the pharmaceuticals segment.

Singapore's industrial production expanded by 19.8 per cent in December when the biomedical manufacturing cluster was excluded.

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Transport engineering, which has suffered from the Covid-19 pandemic, was the only other cluster in the red in December. Output fell by 31.5 per cent on continued contractions in marine and offshore engineering and aerospace, as travel curbs and a weak oil and gas market kept a lid on shipyard and aerospace activity.

Otherwise, some of the electronics sheen rubbed off on precision engineering, where output grew by 11 per cent in December. The cluster was buoyed by semiconductor equipment and measuring devices output in the machinery and systems segment.

The chemicals cluster raised its production by 12.3 per cent in December, helped by the year-ago low base in petrochemicals and specialty chemicals. Petroleum was the only segment to record a year-on-year decline in output for the month.

Meanwhile, general manufacturing expanded by 5.9 per cent in December, with higher production of beverage products and milk powder making up for contraction in areas such as construction-related products.

On a seasonally adjusted, monthly basis, factory output was up by 2.4 per cent in December, or 8.2 per cent when biomedical manufacturing was excluded.

The latest figures came a day after Minister for Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing announced plans to grow Singapore's manufacturing value by 50 per cent over the next decade.