Singapore's economic growth likely to remain modest in 2017 MAS

By：Xinhua Update：2017-04-27

Singapore's overall gross domestic product (GDP) growth is likely to remain modest in 2017, said the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in its twice-yearly macro-economic review issued on Thursday.

MAS said the economy should expand by 1 percent to 3 percent in 2017, not markedly different from the growth of 2 percent in 2016.

The revival of the global economy should continue to support Singapore's trade-related sectors, said MAS.

The outlook for the global economy has been optimistic as global capital expenditure began to turn up amid improving business sentiment and labor market conditions.

Against this external backdrop, MAS said the turnaround in the global IT cycle will continue to benefit the domestic semiconductor and precision engineering industries.

The modern services cluster is also expected to expand at a slightly faster pace in 2017, led by a pickup in the financial sector and firm demand for ICT services.

While healthcare and education services will be underpinned by resilient demand, spending on discretionary retail items and other services is expected to be dampened by the still subdued labor market and weak consumer sentiment, the authority added.

In terms of inflation, MAS core inflation is projected to average 1 percent to 2 percent, compared to 0.9 percent in 2016, while CPI-All Items inflation is expected to rise to 0.5-1.5 percent from - 0.5 percent last year.

The authority said energy-related components will be the main drivers of the projected pickup in inflation.