Singapore’s export growth slowed in September as shipments of electronics and pharmaceuticals eased, heralding softening demand in the coming months as the global economy weakens.

Non-oil domestic exports climbed 22.7% from a year earlier, after a revised 30.8% gain in August, the trade promotion agency said in a statement in Singapore today. The median forecast of 14 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News was for an increase of 19.7%.

 

Overseas demand, which has lifted export-dependent Asian economies including Singapore and China, may falter as governments in Europe embark on austerity programs to cut deficits and households in some of the world’s largest economies hold back spending. Singapore’s economy contracted last quarter as manufacturing cooled, a report showed this month.

 

“The purchasing manager indices of key export markets are tapering off and the electronics cycle has peaked,” Irvin Seah, an economist at DBS Group Holdings in Singapore, said before the report. This “essentially implies a slower pace of growth but not contraction,” he said.

 

Electronics shipments by companies including Venture Corp., Singapore’s biggest publicly traded electronics contract manufacturer, climbed 21.2% in September from a year earlier to $5.8 billion, after a revised 34.8% gain the previous month.

Non-electronics shipments, which include petrochemicals and pharmaceuticals, gained 23.7%. Pharmaceutical shipments rose 16% after climbing 64.7% in August.

 

The performance of Singapore’s pharmaceutical industry is volatile as production swings by companies such as Sanofi- Aventis SA can cause industrial output to fluctuate from month to month. Drug companies sometimes shut plants for cleaning before making different products.

 

Singapore’s non-oil exports dropped a seasonally adjusted 4.5% last month from August, when they gained a revised 9.8%, today’s report showed.