Singapore Industrial Output Falls Unexpectedly In November

(RTTNews) - Singapore industrial production declined unexpectedly in November, a monthly report from the Economic Development Board revealed Friday.

Industrial production was down 2.8 percent in November from last year, confounding expectations for an increase of 0.3 percent.

The annual decline was also faster than the 0.2 percent drop posted in October. This was the third consecutive decrease in production. Excluding biomedical manufacturing, output fell 3.1 percent.

Month-on-month, industrial production slid 1.4 percent, reversing the 2.3 percent increase seen in October. It was expected to grow by 0.4 percent.

Among the components, output of the precision engineering cluster increased 1.4 percent annually and that of electronics cluster went up 1.2 percent.

Meanwhile, the biomedical manufacturing cluster's output fell 1.1 percent and the transport engineering cluster decreased 5.9 percent in November. Similarly, chemical output shrank 6.9 percent and general manufacturing output plunged 10.2 percent.