Singapore non-oil exports fall for first time since June

Singapore’s non-oil domestic exports were reported to have shrunk 4.6% year-on-year in October, following a revised down 0.9% surge in September.

It has been the first drop in the country’s non-oil domestic exports since June.

In October, non-electronic shipments went down 6.7% YoY, after a 1.4% increase in September. The drop was mostly due to declines in:

– pharmaceuticals (-40.4% YoY);
– specialized machinery (-22.6% YoY);
– petrochemicals (-7.4% YoY).

In the meantime, shipments of electronic products rose 2.6% YoY, after a 0.7% slump in September. Growth was propelled by:

– other computer peripherals (+236.1% YoY);
– disk media products (+96.4% YoY);
– integrated circuits (+16.6% YoY).

Among trading partners, Singapore’s shipments decreased the most to Japan (-23.0%), China (-22.3%), Hong Kong (-19.8%) and the European Union (-21.4%).

The Singapore Dollar was little changed on the day against its US counterpart, with the USD/SGD currency pair last trading at 1.3401.