SINGAPORE: Fears of recession are growing in Singapore after the government reported exports from the city-state continued to shrink in August. It comes on the heels of private home sales also seeing a decline of 27 percent in August. The new reports have increased the government's worries that a recession is looming after exports to the European Union were plunging as Europe faces a euro zone crisis and debt problems. The trade-dependent Southeast Asian city-state said on Monday “non-oil domestic exports (NODX) fell 10.6 percent from a year earlier, hurt by a 10.4 percent drop in electronics and a 28.7 percent plummet in shipments to the EU, its largest market,” Reuters news agency reported. It said that overall, the NODX was reduced by over 9 percent on a month-to-month basis after contracting 3.6 percent the previous month. “Electronics exports contracted 14.8 percent in August from July after seasonal adjustments, while non-electronics NODX shrank 7.1 percent,” the trade agency International Enterprises Singapore said in a separate email to the news agency. “Although our baseline case is not for a quarter-on-quarter contraction, the chances are not minute. There is perhaps a 40:60 chance of contraction,” said Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp head of treasury research Selena Ling, whose estimate was the closest among the 13 economists polled by Reuters. The median estimate in a Reuters poll had been for non-oil domestic exports to fall 4.0 percent year-on-year and 1.8 percent month-on-month. Singapore's economy shrank less than anticipated in the second quarter, thanks to a surge in pharmaceutical production in June, gross domestic product (GDP) data showed last month. Economists expect the Southeast Asian city-state's gross domestic product to grow 2.4 percent this year, down from a median estimate of 3.0 percent three months earlier, the central bank's latest quarterly Survey of Professional Forecasters showed.
