Factory output here rises 1% in Nov, falling short of expectations

November Singapore's factory output grew in for a second month but fell short of expectations, largely due to a significant deceleration in electronics, as well as contractions in biomedical production and precision engineering.

- Colin Tan

Total manufacturing production rose 1 per cent year on year, slowing sharply from October's revised 7.6 per cent growth and missing the 2.2 per cent increase expected by analysts in a Bloomberg poll.

While most sectors decelerated from the previous month, chemicals was a bright spot. It improved to finish the month up 2.7 per cent year on year. This was aided by two of its segments speciality and other chemicals.

Meanwhile, the electronics sector which accounts for about 45 per cent of local manufacturing production - saw activity slow to 7.3 per cent, down from a 15.1 per cent expansion from the previous month.

This was led by a sharp slowdown in semiconductor output, which decelerated to post 8.2 per cent growth for November.

Helping to mitigate the electronics sector slowdown, however, was the infocommunications and consumer electronics segment, which snapped back to 13.9 per cent, after having stagnated at zero growth in the period before.

Among the sectors that contracted was precision engineering, which tumbled to end November at minus 14.1 per cent.