Singapore Industrial Production Growth Accelerates

(RTTNews) - Singapore's industrial production growth quickened after easing sharply in the previous two months, preliminary data from the Economic Development Board revealed on Thursday.

Industrial production expanded 8.5 percent year-on-year in November, faster than the 1.2 percent rise in October, which was the slowest increase since the current sequence of growth began in July. The expected growth rate was 10.0 percent.

Excluding biomedical manufacturing, industrial production grew 13.0 percent annually in November versus a 0.4 percent gain in the prior month.

On a monthly basis, industrial production dropped 0.4 percent in November after rebounding 0.1 percent in October.

Among the major clusters, electronics output jumped 26.2 percent annually in November, and precision engineering output was 0.6 percent higher, led by higher production of front-end semiconductor equipment.

On the other hand, biomedical manufacturing output logged a sharp decline of 21.2 percent compared to last year, and general manufacturing output dropped by 2.6 percent.