Singapore's Electronics Growth Shows No Signs of Letting Up

(Bloomberg) -- Singapore’s electronics output surged almost 50 percent in July from a year earlier, underpinning overall manufacturing in the city state and signaling a global trade recovery is holding up.

Industrial production rose 21 percent, the fastest pace in seven months, beating all 17 forecasts in a Bloomberg survey of economists. The electronics cluster, which includes products such as semiconductors, computer inputs and data storage, makes up almost a third of overall manufacturing.

Along with Taiwan, South Korea and other export-reliant economies, Singapore is benefiting from a pick-up in global trade, including high-tech products such as smartphones. Even with some slowdown in China, the growth in the technology sector is set to continue, supporting manufacturing, said Weiwen Ng, an economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd.

“The strong growth in both electronics and precision engineering suggests that there is this tech rally that’s ongoing and it hasn’t lost momentum,” he said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Melissa Cheok in Singapore at mcheok2@bloomberg.net, Myungshin Cho in Seoul at mcho38@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nasreen Seria at nseria@bloomberg.net, Chris Bourke