Total merchandise trade down 3.2% to $1t in 2019

This is blamed on oil trade as it fell 13.9% in 2019 amidst lower oil prices.

Singapore’s total merchandise trade contracted by 3.2% to $1t in 2019, lower by $100b from the $1.1t recorded in 2018, according to the Enterprise Singapore (ESG). This is the first decline recorded in two years, following the 9.2% and 11.1% growth in 2018 and 2017, respectively.

This is blamed on oil trade which fell 13.9% in 2019 amidst lower oil prices than a year ago. Non-oil trade also dipped by 0.3% over the same period.

On a quarterly basis, total merchandise trade declined 5.3% in Q4 2019, which is also attributed to oil and non-oil trade. Oil trade contracted by 20.9% in the quarter, whilst non-oil trade slipped 1%.

Meanwhile, non-oil exports (NOX) dipped 1.9% YoY in 2019, despite inching up 2.1% YoY in Q4 2019, no thanks to the NODX decline as electronic and non-electronic exports went down. NODX fell 9.2% over the same period due to lower shipments of both electronic and non-electronic products.

Electronic NODX crashed 22.5% in 2019 as ICs, PCs and disk media products fell 25%, 33.2% and 22.7%, respectively. Non-electronic NODX slid 4.5%, dragged by pharmaceuticals (-15%), petrochemicals (-14.5%) and specialised machinery (-10.8%).

In addition, NODX to the top markets generally also declined in 2019, mainly due to the decrease in exports to Japan (-28.6%), the EU 28 (-11.4%) and Hong Kong (-16.6%). As for electronic NODX, Hong Kong (-22.3%) became the biggest contributor to its decline, folowed by China (-29.9%) and Taiwan (-29.3%). The top three products contributing to the decrease in electronic NODX for each of the relevant top market are provided in the table below.

In contrast, only non-oil re-exports (NORX) grew by 3.1% in 2019, attributed to the higher shipment of both electronic and non-electronic re-exports.

ESG is expecting the total merchandise trade in 2020 to be in between -0.5% to 1.5%, as the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak continues to take its toll on businesses.