Despite the upwards revision, growth in the first quarter of 2023 was still the weakest since 1Q2021, according to UOB, which adds that external developments continue to affirm its cautious growth outlook for Singapore this year.
Singapore faces the “substantial risk” of entering a technical recession — defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth — largely driven by weakness in manufacturing, according to UOB’s 3Q2023 quarterly global outlook, subtitled Searching for a Recession.
Although Singapore’s final 1Q2023 GDP was revised higher to an increase of 0.4% y-o-y from advance estimates of a y-o-y increase of 0.1%, this was still a quarterly contraction of 0.4% and visibly weaker compared to the y-o-y growth of 2.1% in 4Q2022.
