UOB raises Singapore’s 2024 growth forecast to 3.5% on trade strength

However, its 2025 forecast was downgraded to 2.5% amidst external risks.

UOB Global Economics and Markets Research raised its 2024 growth forecast for Singapore to 3.5%, driven by strong growth in trade-related sectors during Q3.

However, it lowered the 2025 growth forecast to 2.5% from the previous 2.9% due to external risks like geopolitical tensions and a potential slowdown in the electronics sector.

The 2024 forecast matches the Ministry of Trade and Industry’s (MTI) estimate of around 3.5%, whilst the 2025 forecast falls within MTI’s 1%-3% range.

UOB cited several factors for its 2025 forecast, including the timing and impact of potential U.S. tariffs under Trump, geopolitical tensions, a possible slowdown in the electronics cycle, and the pace at which central banks ease interest rates.

However, falling interest rates could help mitigate some of the slowdown by encouraging more business and consumer loans whilst boosting trading activity.

Meanwhile, activity in tourism-related sectors is expected to slow as the boost from post-pandemic pent-up demand fades.

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