Singapore's industrial production declined for the fifth straight month in June at a faster-than-expected pace, preliminary figures from the Economic Development Board showed Friday.
Industrial production decreased notably by 4.4 percent year-over-year in June, much faster than economists' expectations for a 0.4 percent slight drop. In May, production had fallen 1.7 percent.
Excluding biomedical manufacturing, output dipped 5.3 percent annually in June.
Among components, output of the transport engineering cluster plunged 17.5 percent in June from the previous year and that for general manufacturing industries cluster contracted by 3.3 percent.
The precision engineering cluster's output slid 5.0 percent in June and output of the electronics cluster went down by 2.1 percent.
At the same time, output of the chemicals cluster grew 4.2 percent in June from a year ago, contributed by the specialties and other chemicals segments.
On a monthly basis, industrial production fell a seasonally adjusted 3.3 percent in June, confounding economists' expectations for a 1.7 percent climb. In May, output grew 2.5 percent from April.
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