Enterprise Singapore, a government agency, announced Monday that Singapore's total merchandise trade expanded by 10.2 percent in the second quarter, compared to the 2.5 percent increase in the first quarter, as both oil and non-oil trade grew.
It said the city-state's oil trade surged 23.2 percent in the second quarter amid higher oil prices than a year ago, after the 5.1 percent growth in the previous quarter. Non-oil trade rose by 7.1 percent in the second quarter, following the 1.9 percent growth in the first quarter.
Singapore's non-oil exports, including both non-oil domestic exports (NODX) and non-oil re-exports (NORX), grew by 7.3 percent year on year in the second quarter.
In a breakdown, the NODX grew 9.4 percent year on year, and the NORX grew by 5.7 percent year on year. Among the NODX, domestic exports of electronic products declined by 7.6 percent year on year, and that of non-electronic products hiked 16.6 percent year on year.
Meanwhile, Singapore's oil domestic exports grew by 20.6 percent year on year, extending the 8.6 percent growth in the previous quarter; and the oil re-exports grew by 6.1 percent, compared to the 19.7 percent contraction in the first quarter.
Enterprise Singapore attributes the better-than-expected performance of total trade and NODX to the favorable sector-specific export trends in the food and beverages, machinery and pharmaceutical clusters, as well as an improvement in oil prices.
It adjusted Singapore's total trade growth projection and NODX growth projection for the whole year of 2018 to 5-6 percent and 2.5-3.5 percent, respectively.
Statistics show the country's total trade grew by 11.1 percent year on year to 967.1 billion Singapore dollars (about 703.45 billion U.S. dollars) in 2017, and its NODX grew by 8.8 percent to 174.7 billion Singapore dollars in that year.
Enterprise Singapore also announced on Monday Singapore's total services trade grew by three percent year on year in the second quarter, to 119.3 billion Singapore dollars, with services exports and imports increasing by 3.8 percent and 2.1 percent, respectively.
