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Singapore’s exports fell last month mainly because of decline in electronic and non-electronic NODX shipment. Exports to China and Europe continued to fall. Singapore’s non-oil domestic exports (NODX) shrank 2.3 percent year-on-year in June, as compared with the 11.6 percent growth recorded in May. On a month-on-month basis, the exports contracted 12.9 percent, as compared with May’s gain of 16.8 percent, according to the trade agency International Enterprise Singapore.
The June data beat market projections of 3 percent drop year-on-year. Electronics and non-electronics NODX dropped last month by 1.7 percent year-on-year and 2.5 percent year-on-year respectively. Electronics NODX continues to be weighed on by declines in shipment of PCs, PC parts and disk drives that dropped 29 percent year-on-year, 8.5 percent year-on-year and 26.9 percent year-on-year, respectively. Meanwhile, the contraction in non-electronics shipment was because of declines in petrochemicals, electrical machinery and primary chemicals.
For the first half of 2016, Singapore’s NODX fell 4.5 percent year-on-year, in line with International Enterprise Singapore’s full year NODX projection of -3 percent to -5 percent.
However, there were some bright spots. Out of the top 10 NODX markets, five of them witnessed growth in NODX in June, as compared with just three out of top 10 in May. The growth recorded was led by Taiwan, which reported 23 percent, South Korea (6.2 percent year-on-year), US (5.9 percent), Hong Kong (3.3 percent) and Malaysia (2.1 percent), noted OCBC Economist.
Meanwhile, most of the decline in export growth was recorded in Indonesia, China, European Union, Japan and Thailand. Overall, biomedical and electronics output might be rebounding lately, given the industrial production data for January to May period.
“While it remains to be seen in the coming months if there could be some knock-on effects and downside risks to NODX growth to the EU28 market in the kneejerk sentiment reaction to the Brexit referendum, still we anticipate that 2H16 NODX growth could improve slightly to -1.6 percent yoy given a relatively low base in 2H15 (-2.8 percent yoy),” added OCBC Economist.
