SINGAPORE, Sept 25 — Singapore’s manufacturing output increased 13.7 per cent in August 2020 on a year-on-year (y-o-y) basis, according to the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB).
In a statement today, EDB, a government agency under the Ministry of Trade and Industry, said excluding biomedical manufacturing, output grew 15.3 per cent.
On a three-month moving average basis, EDB said manufacturing output decreased 0.7 per cent last month compared to a year ago.
On a seasonally adjusted month-on-month (m-o-m) basis, manufacturing output increased 13.9 per cent, it said, adding that excluding biomedical manufacturing, output grew 4.8 per cent.
Looking at the performance by clusters, the electronics cluster grew 44.2 per cent in August on a y-o-y basis.
The cluster’s growth was mainly attributed to the semiconductors segment which grew 56.9 per cent, supported by demand from cloud services, data centres and the 5G market, said the agency.
As for precision engineering, the cluster’s output increased 9.4 per cent in August compared to the same period a year ago.
The machinery and systems segment grew 17.0 per cent on the back of higher production of semiconductor equipment, said EDB.
The output of biomedical manufacturing, meanwhile, grew by 8.4 per cent in August compared to the same period in 2019.
According to EDB, the medical technology segment grew 19.3 per cent with higher export demand for medical instruments, while pharmaceutical output grew 5.7 per cent on the account of higher output in biological products.
As for the chemical cluster, output increased by 3.1 per cent y-o-y in August 2020.
The specialty chemical and petrochemical segments grew 8.9 per cent and 7.8 per cent, respectively, with the former recording higher output in mineral oil additives, said the agency.
However, the output of other clusters, namely general manufacturing and transport engineering, contracted by 18.6 per cent and 36.0 per cent y-o-y in August 2020, respectively. — Bernama
