2010 growth forecast pegged at as much as 6.5%

Expectations are higher with the Ministry of Trade and Industry revising its forecast following the 4% GDP expansion during the last quarter.

With major economies emerging from the recession, MTI foresees economic growth in Singapore as opposed to its forecast of contraction for 2009. The Singapore economy did contract for the whole of last year, by 2 percent which is close to the forecast of 2 to 2.5 percent.

Major services sectors, excluding the information & communications sector and the business services sector, contracted resulting to a 2.2 percent contraction in services-producing industries. Contraction for the manufacturing sector was by 4.1 percent, with all manufacturing clusters except for the biomedical manufacturing sector contracting in 2009.

Although the outlook for the second half of the year is still not clear, there is increased strength in the momentum for near-term growth with MTI upgrading its forecast from the previous 3 to 5 percent.