Singapore’s 2022 GDP growth beats amid lurking headwinds

Bloomberg

Singapore’s recovery held up in 2022, with a relatively strong year-end performance shoring up the economy ahead of an expected global slowdown this year.
Gross domestic product grew 3.8% during the year, according to advance estimates from the Ministry of Trade and Industry. That’s a slight beat from the government’s projection for a 3.5% annual expansion.
The better-than-forecast performance followed a 2.2% GDP expansion in the three months through December from a year earlier. The economy grew 0.2% last quarter from the previous three months. The Singapore dollar initially rose on the GDP headlines, but reversed course after failing to breach the 1.34 line against the US dollar.
The report showed one clear risk ahead for the trade-reliant economy, with manufacturing shrinking 3% year-on-year in the fourth quarter for the first contraction since the three-month period ended June 2020 and in line with a softening in the region’s trade outlook.
Singapore’s exports declined in November, with the trend likely to continue well into 2023 as the world economy slows amid tighter monetary policy.
The city-state previously forecast that exports — which are more than one-and-a-half times its GDP — will decline 2% in 2023 in the worst-case scenario and post zero growth in the best case.
While many advanced economies are staring at a downturn, the city-state has maintained that a recession is not its base case.