Singapore's trade-reliant economy shrank 1.9 percent in the first quarter from the previous three months on an annualized basis, weighed by contractions in manufacturing and services, preliminary data showed on Thursday.
That matched the median forecast in a Reuters survey of a contraction of 1.9 percent from the previous quarter on an annualized basis. In the fourth quarter GDP had jumped 12.3 percent quarter-on-quarter.
"The manufacturing sector expanded by 6.6 per cent on a year-on-year basis in the first quarter, moderating from the 11.5 per cent growth in the previous quarter," the Ministry of Trade and Industry said in a press release.
"Growth was supported primarily by robust output expansions in the electronics and precision engineering clusters, which outweighed output declines in the biomedical manufacturing, transport engineering and general manufacturing clusters."