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SINGAPORE: Singapore's manufacturing output rose 12.4 per cent in July from a year earlier, due largely to a jump in biomedical output.
This far exceeds analysts' expectations of a one per cent decline.
Some analysts said July's numbers are another encouraging sign that the Singapore economy is on the way to recovery.
Compared with June, industrial production climbed 23 per cent on a seasonally adjusted basis.
Data released Wednesday from the Economic Development Board showed that output from the biomedical manufacturing cluster more than doubled, leaping 125.4 per cent on-year on the back of a jump in pharmaceuticals.
And that helped overall manufacturing output to grow by 12.4% on year - the strongest pace since March last year.
Excluding biomedicals, overall manufacturing output would have declined 7.4 per cent from a year ago.
"(Biomed) is a bit of a out-performer. Healthcare has changed a bit globally; there are a lot of countries ramping up their medicare as well as their flu vaccines and things like that, so this could give a bit of support to biomed going forward," said Vishnu Varathan, regional economist at Forecast.
The pace of declines in other clusters also moderated last month with chemicals, electronics and general manufacturing showing low-single digit falls.
The key tech sector saw a softer decline of 5.6 per cent year on year.
Meanwhile, the petrochemicals segment expanded 17.6 per cent in July.
Output of the transport engineering cluster shrank 10.2 per cent from a year earlier due to contractions in the aerospace, offshore engineering and land transport segments.
"I think for the full year, we'll be showing an improving trajectory compared to a few months ago, and that should help the overall GDP achieve something slightly better then the latest government official projection of a contraction of 4 to 6 in 2009," said David Cohen, director of Asian Economic Forecasting at Action Economics.
"Perhaps we could get something close to a 3 per cent contraction in 2000 - that's still a decline from a year ago but it does indicate a recovery,” he added.
In all, output in the first seven months contracted 10.3 per cent compared to the same period last year.
- CNA/yb/ls
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