One masterpiece painting to add to the F-Art Gallery....
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Singapore's economy expands 12.8% in 2nd quarter
Tue, Jul 10, 2007
AsiaOne
The Singapore economy registered strong growth in second quarter of
2007 and expanded at an annualised rate of 12.8 per cent, beating
market forecasts, government data showed on Tuesday.
Advance estimates released by the Ministry of Trade and Industry
this morning show that real gross domestic product (GDP) rose by
8.2 per cent on a year-on-year basis in the second quarter, up from
6.4 per cent in the previous quarter.
On a quarter-on-quarter seasonally adjusted annualised basis, real
GDP grew by 12.8 per cent following 8.5 per cent in the first
quarter.
The seasonally adjusted rise from the previous quarter compared
with 7.6 percent growth forecast by economists in a Reuters poll
and followed a revised 8.5 percent expansion in the first quarter
of 2007. Economists had expected second quarter GDP to grow 6.6
percent from a year earlier.
Underpinned by strong growth in the biomedical manufacturing and
transport engineering clusters, the manufacturing sector is
estimated to have grown by 10.2 per cent the second quarter, up
from 4.4 per cent in the previous quarter.
Fuelled by the property boom, the construction sector is estimated
to have expanded by 17.9 per cent in the second quarter, up further
from 11.6 per cent in the previous quarter. Residential property
prices rose 7.9 percent in the second quarter, faster than the 4.8
percent rise recorded in the previous quarters, latest URA figures
showed.
The services producing industries is estimated to have grown by 7.0
per cent in the second quarter compared with 7.2 per cent in the
preceding quarter. The healthy performance was led by financial
services.
The advance GDP estimates, based largely on data from April and
May, gives an early indication of the economy's performance in the
April to June period.
Singapore is the first in the region to report second-quarter
figures.
The preliminary GDP estimates for the second quarter of 2007,
including sectoral performances, sources of growth, inflation,
employment and productivity, will be released in August 2007 in the
Economic Survey of Singapore.
Singapore's economy is expected to show more moderate growth this
year, in line with a slower global economy, but analysts expect the
island will draw support from new areas such as financial services,
tourism and a fast-recovering construction sector.
Faster-than-expected growth in the first three months of the year
prompted Singapore's government in May to lift its 2007 growth
forecast by half a percentage point to 5.0-7.0 percent.
In 2006, the economy grew 7.9 percent.
