Singapore's industrial production declined for the seventh straight month in April and the pace of decline was worse than expected, official data revealed on Friday. Industrial production posted an annual fall of 6.9 percent in April, bigger than the 3.8 percent decrease in March, the Economic Development Board said. This was also larger than the expected 3.9 percent decline.
Excluding biomedical manufacturing, manufacturing output slid 6.1 percent.
On a monthly basis, industrial output was down 1.9 percent, in contrast to April's 9.7 percent increase and economists' forecast of 0.9 percent gain.
In April, only transport engineering cluster logged annual expansion, while all other clusters registered notable contractions.
Output of transport engineering advanced 14.5 percent from the last year, underpinned by a higher level of activities in the shipyards and increased production of oil and gas field equipment.
Chemical output decreased 6.2 percent and general manufacturing was down 7.6 percent. Precision engineering cluster logged a decrease of 8.2 percent and output of electronics cluster slid 8.7 percent. At the same time, biomedical manufacturing output decreased 11.1 percent mainly due to lower demand for medical devices from the US and Europe.
