Chart of the Day: Check out how oil-related activities spoiled biomedical surge

Marine activities led the drastic drag.

There’s no denying that the city-state’s industrial production leans heavily on the temperament of oil prices. It’s therefore no surprise then that not even a rebound in biomedical output was able to subdue major drags by the transport engineering cluster which remained dismal in the aftermath of the crude oil price slide.

According to analysts from Maybank Kim Eng, the skidding transport engineering cluster was aggravated by the depressing outlook of the marine & offshore engineering cluster as a result of muted rig and ship building activities.

Electronics production’s four-month struggle also contributed in a negative way, weighed down by plummeting semiconductor output.

Meanwhile, the biomedicals cluster remained the lone bright spot, triggered by a rebound in Chemicals growth.

“The robust growth in Medical Technology was sustained at +17.5% YoY (Aug 2015: +18.3% YoY). Chemicals output (Sep 2015: +4.4% YoY; Aug 2015: +2.6% YoY) continued to be driven by ‘Specialties’ (Sep 2015: +8.8% YoY; Aug 2015: +4.2% YoY) on the back of expanded production capacities,” Maybank Kim Eng said.