Singapore's manufacturing sector is on a tear

Growth pegged to hit to 9.8%.

Upward revision to the 1Q14 GDP growth figures is on the cards thanks to the manufacturing sector's stronger showing.

DBS noted that industrial output in March surged by 12.1% YoY (6.1% MoM sa). This is about twice the pace predicted by the market and implicit in the advance GDP estimates (about 6.5% YoY). Importantly, this will lead to an upward revision in the manufacturing growth figure for the first quarter to 9.8% YoY, from 8.0% projected previously.

Here's more:

More importantly, a significant upward revision to the first quarter GDP growth figure is in the making. The manufacturing sector accounts for about 27% of overall GDP. This upward adjustment in the manufacturing sector growth alone will add about 0.5%-pt to the headline GDP growth figure for the first quarter.

Moreover, chance is high for the services sector growth to be revised upward as well. While there have been some volatilities in the financial markets recently, the associated risk level was not of similar magnitude compared to the previous episode. So, it is hard to imagine the services sector, usually the most stable engine in the economy, dipping into contraction when the downside risk was not exactly that significant.

Reaching the people who run Asia's businesses is harder than it used to be.

Inboxes are crowded. Attention is short. The executives you most want to reach — the founders, CFOs, and operators who actually move budgets — are the hardest to find through the usual channels. If you're building a company, a category, or a reputation, you already know this.

We've spent twenty years building the room they read. Singapore Business Review is where senior decision makers in Singapore and across Southeast Asia come for business coverage they can't get elsewhere — in print, online, and in person at the summits and roundtables we host across seven markets.

If you have something these readers should know about — a point of view worth publishing, a product worth their attention, an event worth their time — we'd like to hear what you're trying to do.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia