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Singapore’s non-oil domestic exports (NODX) slumped by 2.6 percent y/y (-4.2 percent m/m sa) during the month of November, marking the first y/y contraction since March this year. This is worse than expectations for 0 percent y/y (-1.1 percent m/m sa) and significantly below the market consensus forecast of 1.8 percent y/y (1.1 percent m/m sa).
This is also a sharp turnaround from the 8.2 percent y/y (4.2 percent m/m sa) performance seen in Oct18 and is partly due to the high base last year. The key drag came from non-electronics exports which contracted 5.2 percent y/y in the last month.
While pharmaceuticals exports also expanded 8.4 percent y/y (-31.3 percent m/m), which reflects its inherently more volatile nature of production, on the other hand, petrochemical exports fell for the third straight month by 7.8 percent y/y.
Electronics exports rose 4.5 percent y/y (9.3 percent m/m) in November, registering the first increase on y/y terms since same period last year (5.1 percent y/y). Notably, the improvement in electronics exports was mainly led by ICs (27.9 percent y/y) which offset the weakness in other key electronics segments like PC parts (-30.8 percent y/y), diodes and transistors (-31.9 percent y/y), disk media products (-12.9 percent y/y) and PCs (-19.6 percent y/y).
By country, NODX fell for 6 of the top 10 NODX markets, with South Korea (-25.7 percent y/y), Indonesia (-20.3 percent y/y) and China (-16.0 percent y/y) being the worst performers in November. In comparison, NODX rose for the United States (33.1 percent y/y), Thailand (6.5 percent y/y), Japan (1.6 percent y/y) and Taiwan (0.3 percent y/y).
"We’re still looking for a more subdued external growth environment to kickstart 2019. Given that there is only one month of NODX data remaining for 2018, full-year NODX growth looks likely to come in at the low end of IESingapore’s revised 2018 NODX growth forecast of 5.5-6.0 percent," said Selena Ling, Head of Treasury Research & Strategy, OCBC Bank.
