The Singapore Economic Development Board announced Thursday the country’s total manufacturing output increased 22.5 percent from June 2005 to June 2006.
All of Singapore’s manufacturing clusters’ increased in output significantly, with biomedical manufacturing spearheading the growth with an increase in output of almost 60 percent. Contributing 28 percent of its GDP, manufacturing is the catalyst of Singapore’s economic growth. Last year the government announced a $177 billion target by 2018 for its manufacturing industry. Singapore’s manufacturing industry grew 16.4 percent during the first six months in 2006. Biomedical manufacturing grew 59.4 percent from 2005, with exploding growth in pharmaceuticals.Electronics achieved 10 percent growth in June, led by the expansion from the semiconductor and computer peripherals sectors. Semiconductor production rose 33.7 percent, riding on continued demand for DRAMs and NAND products for mobile consumer electronic products.
Chemicals output increased 3.4 percent from last year with petrochemicals showing 20 percent growth and specialty chemicals production at 13 percent.
