Workers at a manufacturing facility in Singapore.
SINGAPORE: Singapore’s manufacturing output continued its decline in June, with demand down in all clusters except electronics and precision engineering.
Industrial production fell 6.7 per cent year-on-year in June, extending May’s revised 8.1 per cent decline, the Economic Development Board (EDB) said in a media release on Friday (Jul 24).
Excluding biomedical manufacturing, output grew 2.1 per cent.
On a seasonally adjusted month-on-month basis, manufacturing output increased 0.2 per cent in June. Excluding biomedical manufacturing, it decreased 0.8 per cent, EDB said.
COVID-19 RESTRICTIONS HIT OUTPUT
Transport engineering recorded the largest drop across all clusters at 33.9 per cent, with demand weakening in all segments.
The marine and offshore engineering segment contracted 53.3 per cent. This was because movement restrictions to stop the spread of COVID-19 in foreign worker dormitories slowed the progression of work in the shipyards, EDB said.
The aerospace segment also contracted 23 per cent, as the volume of aircraft repair and maintenance work remained low amid the pandemic.
Multiple foreign worker dormitories with confirmed COVID-19 cases were gazetted as isolation areas in April.
All migrant workers in dormitories were later barred from leaving their premises to curb the spread of COVID-19, while the authorities worked to test and separate those who were free from the virus.
The Ministry of Manpower said on Tuesday that 891 dormitories and 56 blocks for recovered workers in 17 purpose-built dormitories had been declared clear of the virus. As of Tuesday, 247,000 migrant workers had either recovered from COVID-19 or been tested to be free of the virus.
In the biomedical manufacturing cluster, output declined 30.6 per cent in June, after a 1.9 per cent and 90 per cent increase in May and April, respectively.
The medical technology segment grew 5.9 per cent to meet export demand for coronavirus-related medical devices, but the pharmaceutical sector fell 37.4 per cent on lower output of biological products, EDB said.
Declines of 12.1 per cent and 13.9 per cent were reported for the chemicals and general manufacturing clusters, respectively.
SEMICONDUCTORS CONTRIBUTE GROWTH
The electronics cluster, one of only two industries to see growth, rose 17.3 per cent. This was largely due to a 26 per cent jump in output for semiconductors, which was supported by demand from cloud services and data centres as well as 5G markets, said EDB.
The infocomms and consumer electronics segment also grew 6.9 per cent.
In the precision engineering cluster, which rose 9.1 per cent, growth in the machinery and systems segment was also buoyed by higher production of semiconductor equipment, EDB said.
July’s monthly manufacturing performance will be released on Aug 26.
