Why pharmaceutical segment brings headache to Singapore’s manufacturing output

It has contracted for three consecutive months now.

The city-state's industrial production might have posted a much higher improvement if not because of the flailing biomedical manufacturing cluster.

According to a report published by UOB, manufacturing output grew an unnoticeably 0.1% in August, inching up from -3.5% contraction in July. One of the key reasons for the weak overall activity is the slow -8.4% pace in biomedical manufacturing output.

"Excluding that cluster, IP expanded 2.3% YoY," UOB said.

The said segment has been contracting for the past two months before August.

"The lower production of active pharmaceutical ingredients and biological products had caused a 14.1% YoY decline in pharma output," the note stated.

This had offset 12.1% YoY expansion in the medical technology segment.

UOB noted that weaknesses were also seen in the general manufacturing cluster as well as the transport engineering cluster.