Singapore’s non-oil domestic exports (NODX) rose 7.7 percent in March 2022 from a year earlier, well above the 1.7 percent average forecast in a Bloomberg poll of analysts. Enterprise Singapore (ESG) published the data on Monday, April 18. It was the 16th straight month of growth.
The rate keeps cooling, though. February’s revised figure was 9.4 percent, and January’s was 17.6 percent. The Russia-Ukraine conflict has added uncertainty.
Electronics NODX grew 11.5 percent, a shade under February’s 11.6 percent, with integrated circuits, disk drives and personal computers doing the lifting. Non-electronics rose 6.8 percent, down from 8.8 percent. Non-monetary gold, pharmaceuticals and measuring instruments contributed most.
On a seasonally adjusted month-on-month basis, NODX fell 2.3 percent after a 2.9 percent decline in February. Non-electronics dragged it down while electronics shipments grew. The level was S$17.2 billion, against S$17.6 billion the month before.
Where the shipments went
Shipments to the top 10 markets as a whole rose. The largest contributors were the United States (68.1 percent), Malaysia (29.1 percent) and the European Union (16.8 percent). Exports to Hong Kong, South Korea and Thailand declined.
Prices versus volumes
Maybank economists Chua Hak Bin and Lee Ju Ye said exports are still being “driven and flattered by higher prices rather than volumes.” Real NODX, measured at 2018 prices, shrank 3.4 percent, its second straight monthly fall, after a 1.6 percent decline in February. They tied that to manufacturing capacity limits and supply disruptions. “The negative real export growth suggests that industrial production may pull back sharply in March from the highs in February,” they added.
Oxford Economics analysts Priyanka Kishore and Sung-Eun Jung noted that real total exports contracted 1.1 percent year on year in March after growing 7.9 percent in February. They expect weak export momentum in the second quarter as well, with China’s zero-Covid approach adding logistical problems.
OCBC chief economist Selena Ling said first-quarter NODX growth came to 11.4 percent, up from 9.6 percent a year earlier, despite the Omicron surge. “This suggests that Nodx growth is off to a good start despite the twin headwinds of inflation exacerbated by global supply chain bottlenecks that are partly due to the Ukraine war, as well as the likely slowdown in China’s demand given the current Covid-19-related lockdowns,” she said.
Ling expects second-quarter growth to ease to 7.9 percent, with electronics slowing, and said China’s late-March lockdowns could be felt more clearly from April. She added that “a degree of caution may be warranted in the coming months” because the Ukraine conflict could disrupt supply chains for energy, commodities and food, and keep inflation higher for longer.
