SINGAPORE, July 12 — Singapore’s economy expanded more than economists estimated last quarter as manufacturing rebounded and services strengthened, reducing pressure on the central bank to ease monetary policy and bolster growth.

Gross domestic product rose an annualized 15.2 per cent in the three months through June from the previous quarter, when it grew 1.8 per cent, the Trade Ministry said in a statement today. That compares with the median of 12 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey for an 8.1 per cent expansion.

Rising local demand has shielded some Asian nations from an uneven global recovery, with Singapore’s jobless rate near a five-year low spurring private consumption. The Monetary Authority of Singapore has let its dollar weaken about 3 per cent against the greenback in the past six months, boosting the island’s export competitiveness, even after sticking to a policy of allowing gradual currency gains in April to contain inflationary pressures.

“Going into the second half of the year, we should continue to see steady and gradual improvement in the services sector,” Irvin Seah, a Singapore-based economist at DBS Group Holdings Ltd., said before the report. “The risk on inflation and growth remains very well-balanced. There’s little incentive for the MAS to deviate from the current monetary policy.”

The Singapore dollar was little changed at S$1.2599 against the US dollar as of 7:53am local time.

GDP expanded 3.7 per cent last quarter from a year earlier, better than the median estimate of 2 per cent growth in a separate Bloomberg survey. The government forecasts growth of 1 per cent to 3 per cent in 2013.

‘Sharp rebound’

“The sharp rebound largely reflected the strong growth in the output of the biomedical manufacturing and electronics clusters,” the Trade Ministry said today.

Singapore’s electronics exports by companies such as Venture Corp. have dropped for 10 straight months through May, the longest string of losses since 2009. Analysts have lowered their estimate for the island’s export expansion this year to 2.5 per cent from 4 per cent, according to a survey by the central bank last month.

Located at the southern end of the 600-mile (965-kilometre) Malacca Strait and home to one of the world’s busiest container ports, Singapore has remained vulnerable to fluctuations in overseas demand for manufactured goods. The government has boosted the financial services and tourism industries to become less reliant on exports.

Singapore’s unemployment rate was 1.9 per cent in the first quarter. Wages will grow at a faster pace in 2013, the central bank said in April.

The central bank uses the exchange rate rather than borrowing costs to conduct monetary policy, adjusting the pace of appreciation or depreciation against an undisclosed trade- weighted basket of currencies by changing the slope, width and center of the band. A flatter slope allows slower appreciation or depreciation over time.

Manufacturing grew 1.1 per cent from a year earlier in the three months ended June 30, and 37.6 per cent from the previous quarter. The services industry rose 5 per cent last quarter from a year earlier, while construction expanded 5.6 per cent. — Bloomberg