Among the different industries, the construction sector suffered the most, with a 44.7% y-o-y plunge, as worksites were either undermanned or forced to remain at a standstill as workers remained under quarantine at their dormitories. However, the sector should rebound in the current 4Q2020 as movement restrictions on foreign worker dormitories were lifted in August, says economist Sung Eun Jung at Oxford Economics.
Following the historic y-o-y plunge of 13.3% in 2Q2020, Singapore’s economy moderated to shrink by 7% y-o-y in the third-quarter, according to official advance estimates. On a q-o-q seasonally-adjusted basis, the republic’s GDP expanded by 7.9% in 3Q2020 ended September, a significant deviation from the 13.2% plunge seen in the previous quarter, according to the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) on Oct 14.
This rebound comes on the heels of the phased re-opening of Singapore’s economy from June 19, after the two-month-long lockdown in April and May that prohibited the operations of non-essential services to curb the spread of Covid-19. The 3Q2020 GDP performance is in line with the 7.6% y-o-y drop anticipated by some 23 private-sector economists in a survey released by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) on Sept 7.
