Things you need to know right now about Singapore's May NODX

It's worse than last month's drop.

According to UOB Economic-Treasury Research, Singapore’s May non-oil domestic exports (NODX) contracted 4.6% y/y, worse than the 1.0% y/y decline seen a month ago and over-shooting consensus estimates of a milder 0.2% decline. 

On an m/m SA basis, May’s NODX declined 1.1%, following the 1.1% expansion seen in April.

The decline in NODX this month was due again to the contraction in exports of electronic products, which outweighed the growth in non-electronic exports.

Here's more from UOB Economic-Treasury Research:

Singapore’s electronic NODX had declined for 10 months in a row, and contracted 13.2% y/y in May, compared to previous month’s 9.0% decline.

The decline in electronic exports was due mainly to continued weakness in PCrelated segments such as parts of PCs (-31.6% y/y), disk media products (-40.8% y/y), and ICs (-9.5% y/y).

Several PC-related segments had been facing structural headwinds as nominal export values had been declining for quite some time.

This will continue to weigh on the performance of electronic exports until their share becomes negligible.

For example, nominal values of exports of disk drives used to account for 21.5% of total electronic exports back in 2000.

It had been declining steadily to reach 18% by 2005, and 5.2% in 2012. The same goes for parts of PCs which saw share declining from 21.4% in 2005 to 16.1% in 2012. Consumer electronics too, declined from 6.2% in 2005 to 2.0% in 2012.

During this period, nominal value of exports of ICs grew and as a percentage to total electronic exports, it grew from 29% in 2005 to 42.3% in 2012.