Singapore's gross domestic product added 4.9 percent on year in the first quarter of 2014, the Ministry of Trade and Industry said on Tuesday - unchanged from the previous three months.
Seasonally adjusted and on an annualized quarterly basis, GDP climbed 2.3 percent - slowing from 6.9 percent in the previous three months.
Upon the release of the data, the MTI said that it is maintaining its GDP growth forecast for 2014 at 2.0 to 4.0 percent.
"The Singapore economy is expected to grow at a modest pace in 2014. In tandem with the gradual improvement in the global economy, externally-oriented sectors such as manufacturing and wholesale trade are likely to provide support to growth. Domestically-oriented sectors such as business services are also expected to remain stable," the MTI said.
The manufacturing sector expanded 9.8 percent on year and 11.9 percent on quarter. This was largely driven by a sharp rebound in the biomedical manufacturing cluster, as well as stronger growth in the chemicals and transport engineering clusters, the MTI said.
The construction sector expanded 6.7 percent on year and 0.6 percent on quarter. The moderation in growth was largely due to weakness in private sector construction activities.
The finance and insurance sector expanded 5.4 percent on year and 3.5 percent on quarter, thanks to a slowdown in the sentiment-sensitive cluster.
Growth in the accommodation and food services sector slowed to 0.9 percent on year and 3.1 percent on quarter, due to weaker expansion in the accommodation segment.
Growth in the transportation and storage sector eased to 4.9 percent on year and contracted 5.6 percent on quarter, due to the weak performance of the air transport segment, the MTI said.
"Uncertainties in the global macroeconomic environment remain," the MTI said. "In the US, there are uncertainties over the pace at which the Federal Reserve will exit from its accommodative monetary policy. If the pace of monetary policy normalization increases unexpectedly, financial markets may react adversely and business sentiments in the US may also be dampened."
For comments and feedback: editorial@rttnews.com