While Gan expects manufacturing to continue to contract y-o-y for the first half, a gradual uptick is seen in the second half. “Since the start of the year, we noticed that the performance of advanced economies has been relatively resilient, thus translating into the return of global risk appetite and improving momentum in externally-related economic data across most of Asean,” says Gan.
For all the prevailing gloom, there are still some market watchers keeping an upbeat view. Barnabas Gan of RHB Group Research is one. He sees Singapore’s GDP growing by 2.0% this year, with recovery momentum likely to be observed in 2H2023.
The official forecast, as at May 25, was for Singapore to barely avert a recession with fullyear growth falling between 0.5% and 2.5%. GDP in the first three months of the year barely scraped by with 0.4% y-o-y growth, moderating from the 2.1% seen in 1Q2022, no thanks to manufacturing which contracted 5.6% y-o-y. On a q-o-q basis, the GDP contracted by 0.4%, reversing from the 0.1% growth in 4Q2022.
