Bio Medical sector sickened by pathetic outputs

2010 is looking sick for the biomedical sector, with firms declaring hiring freezes and government figures now revealing a 13.3 percent drop in biomedical output.

At a time where general growth for the manufacturing sector is picking up, the flailing industry is a sore thumb in a slowly flourishing sector. The pick up in manufacturing is largely attributed to a spill over effect from construction activities.

Total manufacturing output increased by 14.4 percent for 2009. Excluding biomedical manufacturing, this figure would be a 23.9 percent increase.

Growth in manufacturing came from sectors such as the electronics manufacturing, which increased by 57.3% in December last year, or the precision engineering cluster that jumped by 22.4 percent in December due to increased demand for metal precision components and metal stampings.

Aside from biomedical and pharmaceuticals suffering, printing and food, beverages & tobacco segments also contracted by 0.1% and 6.4% respectively. Pharmaceuticals contracted by 16.3% due to different product mix of active pharmaceutical ingredients.

The transport engineering cluster output also declined by 14.8% in December 2009 compared with the same month last year. This is attributed to the output of the land transport segment spiked up 117.3%, mainly due to a ramp up in production to meet delivery before year end.