SINGAPORE (Oct 24): Singapore’s economy may be a few quarters away from a recovery as the decline in trade and manufacturing this year hasn’t really spread to other sectors, the central bank’s chief said.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore’s baseline view is that “the current cycle should be bottoming out toward the end of the year and into next year,” Managing Director Ravi Menon said in an interview. That’s based on the assumption that the slump will be largely contained in the trade and manufacturing industries, he said.
Singapore’s export-reliant economy has seen a sharper downturn in the second half of this year amid ongoing tensions between the US and China, two of its biggest trading partners. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said last week that the city state would be “lucky” to achieve positive growth for the year.
