Chart of the Day: Singapore's 5.2% industrial production jump surprised analysts

And yes, everyone was happy.

According to J.P. Morgan, December IP rose 5.2%m/m, sa, leaving it much stronger than expected at 6.2%oya (JPM -1.7%; consensus -1.4%). As a result, the trend rate rose 17.3%3/3m, saar from 11.7% in November. Details were positive across the board.

With the final IP print of the quarter in and with it being much stronger than expected, our nowcaster shows annualized GDP growth at 4.0% last quarter.

Here's more from J.P. Morgan:

Previously, our nowcaster showed GDP growth at 1.8%, which was much higher than the Advance GDP estimate of -2.7%. The reason for this unusually large miss reflected extreme weakness in construction and services, which we think were one-off contractions last quarter. Even with the better December IP print, we estimate that the economy shrunk last quarter but by a more modest -0.6%. This change, along with our expectation for a 9.1% spurt this quarter, leaves our estimates for 2013 and 2014 at 3.9% (from 3.7% previously) and 4.5% (from 4.1%).

In the details, electronics were up the most, rising 7.9%m/m, sa and were up 21.4%3m/3m, saar. Some of the strong monthly print may have been payback after the deep decline in November but our sense is that Singapore is benefitting from the regional electronics cycle rebound underway. Outside of electronics, the more volatile biomedical and transport engineering goods sectors were also up 6.0%m/m, sa and 1.9%. The trend growth rate in biomedicals was not as strong as electronics up, 4.7%3m/3m, saar, but this was a big improvement over the five of months of contraction previously and transportation engineering goods surged 47.3% as production in marine/offshore and land-based transport engineering goods have been strong.