Here's why the pressure is up for Singapore's services sector

It's a hefty 68% of overall GDP.

According to DBS, Signapore services sector has turned. Year-on-year growth in this sector has been declining steadily over the last two years.

But it grew 1.7% YoY in 4Q12, exactly in line with DBS forecast. This is up from a flat growth in the previous quarter. Sequentially, it expanded 2.5% in 4Q12 against a sluggish 0.4% in the third quarter.

Here's more from DBS:

Now this sector accounts for about 68% of overall GDP. If this sector turns, the entire economy will move along with it. This has been evident in several occasions on previous years.

More importantly, services sector growth has finally started to grind north despite the domestic labour crunch. Return in investor confidence as well as stronger intra-regional trade will provide the necessary impetus for growth in this sector in the coming quarters.

With that, we continue to maintain our full year GDP growth forecast of 3.2% for the year. Growth momentum in the near term will remain flattish but it should pick up from the second quarter onwards.

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