Here's the lone bright spot in Singapore's sinking manufacturing industry

Output for electronics cluster spikes 16.2%.

There remains a bright spot for Singapore's manufacturing industry in the form of semiconductors, which posted an output increase of 34% for the month of July.

According to SGX MyGateway report, what kept the manufacturing output from submerging further its 3.6% decline in July is the electronics cluster, which posted an increase in output at 16.2% on top of the 19% spike the previous month.

"The output gains in the Electronics cluster was mainly attributed to the Semiconductors segment; where output increased 34.0% y-o-y in July, on top of the +39.1% y-o-y seen in June 2016," the report pointed out.

Attributing data from the Semiconductor Industry Association, the report said global sales of semiconductors in June 2016 was at US$26.4 billion ($36 billion), representing a 1.1% spike on a month-on-month basis.

Further, the report said that the 12 Semiconductor and Semiconductor Equipment stocks listed has a combined market capitalization of $749 million, with an average year-to-date total return of 9.5%.

The largest five stocks which includes UMS Holdings, Micro-Mechanics, Ellipsiz, CDW Holding, and Avi-Tech Electronics averaged a 25.9% total return in the year-to-date.