Singapore's GDP inches up by 2.1% in 2015

Thanks to a reversal in the construction sector.

It’s certainly a happy new year for the city-state as it ended the year with a blast—a 2.1% surge in gross domestic product (GDP) which is in line with the Ministry of Trade and Industry’s (MTI) forecasts of close to 2% growth.

According to a press release by the MTI, the GDP growth in the fourth quarter was slightly faster than the 1.8% growth the previous quarter, expanding by a faster pace of 5.7%.

However, the GDP jump could have been greater if it weren’t for the continued slide in the manufacturing sector, which contracted by 6% in the fourth quarter after declining by 5.9% in the third.

“The sector was primarily weighed down by a decline in the output of the electronics, transport engineering and precision engineering clusters. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, the sector contracted at an annualised rate of 3.1 per cent, following the 3.5 per cent contraction in the preceding quarter,” MTI said.

Meanwhile, the construction sector picked up the slack as it expanded by 2.2%, an improvement from the 1.1% recorded in the previous quarter, as growth was supported by a pick-up in public sector construction activities.