Manufacturing output falls; marks 11th month of decline

Data also shows electronics cluster output fell 12.4% in December 2015.

Singapore's manufacturing output dropped for an 11th consecutive month in December, data showed on Tuesday.

Data released by the Economic Development Board showed the largest decline happened in the transport engineering cluster.

While manufacturing output declined 7.9% in December 2015 on a year-on-year basis, excluding biomedical manufacturing, the output decline was 13.0%, EDB said in a statement.

On a three-month moving average basis, manufacturing output contracted 6.7% in December 2015, compared to a year ago.

Output of the biomedical manufacturing cluster grew 16.2% in December 2015 on a year-on-year basis. The medical technology segment grew 36.1% on the back of higher export demand for medical devices while output of the pharmaceuticals segment increased 10.4%.

Another segment that recorded growth was the aerospace and land transport segments which recorded increases of 15.4% and 6.1% respectively.

While output of the chemicals cluster decreased 0.3% in December 2015 compared to a year ago, the decline in general manufacturing cluster was 5.3% and precision engineering cluster decreased 6.8%.

The data also showed the electronics cluster output fell 12.4% in December 2015.

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