Singapore's economic growth forecast raised to 2.5%

It will be led by the surge in manufacturing growth.

Economists surveyed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore have raised their growth forecast for the Singapore economy this year, up to 2.5% from 2.3% in the previous survey.

Growth will be boosted by manufacturing, which is foreseen to realise a 5% improvement.

Whilst the expectations for private consumption remained flat at 1.1%, forecast for trade slumped to 5.6%.

"As reflected by the mean probability distribution, the most likely outcome is for the Singapore economy to grow by between 2.0 to 2.9% this year. This is unchanged from the last survey, albeit with a higher probability assigned to this range in the current survey. For the second quarter, the respondents expect GDP to expand by 2.7%," MAS said.

For next year, the respondents’ median expectation is for GDP growth to reach 2.5%, while CPI All-Items and MAS Core Inflation are projected to be 1.4% and 1.7% respectively.