Showing falls short of forecast 8.1% and pales against August’s 10.9% pace.

After expanding stronger than expected in August, Singapore’s non-oil domestic exports sprang another surprise last month - this time it was a dismal showing with meagre 2.2 per cent growth from a year ago, falling far short of the 8.1 per cent gain analysts have forecast.

The disappointment on the export front is all the more stark, coming soon after the government announced last week that the economy on the whole grew a blistering 9.4 per cent in the third quarter (Q3), trumping analysts’ projections.

The weak performance in September’s non-oil domestic exports (NODX), following the surprisingly robust 10.9 per cent expansion in the previous month, dampened Q3’s export growth to 6.2 per cent.

So the NODX’s growth has continued to trail overall economic growth, breaking from past patterns, and seems out of step with an export-led economy.

For the full year, International Enterprise Singapore, the government’s trade promotion arm, has trimmed NODX’s growth forecast from 7-9 per cent to 4-6 per cent.

The Ministry of Trade and Industry has, on the other hand, upped its growth projection for the economy from 4.5-6.5 per cent to 7-8 per cent.

Yet the NODX has put up a stronger showing in 3Q, following a measly expansion of 1.5 per cent in Q2.

‘In trend terms, looking at the 3-period moving average, NODX has been improving since February 2007 - in line with our Asean-4 export lead indicator,’ says Prakriti Sofat, an economist at HSBC Bank.

And the improvement is in tandem with the overall advance in the economy, which expanded 6.5 per cent in Q1, 8.7 per cent in Q2 and 9.4 per cent in Q3.

Weak electronics domestic exports dragged down NODX growth in September. Electronics shipments fell sharply by 10.6 per cent, the eighth straight monthly contraction.

‘The decline of electronics domestic exports was due to the lower domestic exports of parts of PCs (personal computers), ICs (integrated circuits), telecommunications equipment and disk drives,’ said IE Singapore when it released the latest trade figures yesterday.

Last month’s growth in the NODX was largely propped up by non-electronic exports, which rose 14 per cent. Even then, non-electronic shipments were not as strong as August’s 22 per cent growth.

Compared with the previous month, the NODX in September dipped 1.5 per cent to $14.7 billion.

Year-on-year, total trade in September inched up 0.7 per cent to $71.4 billion, after growing by the same amount in August.

Domestic exports to the United States, Taiwan, China, Indonesia and Malaysia fell last month. Shipments to the US, Singapore’s second largest market, declined 8.3 per cent after rising 2.9 per cent in August.

The European Union, Singapore’s largest market, was among the biggest contributors to the NODX’s growth in September. But shipments to the EU, which jumped 41.7 per cent in August, rose just 13.2 per cent last month.

Hong Kong and South Korea were the other big contributors to September’s NODX growth, according to IE Singapore.

Source: Business Times

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