Singapore is witnessing rapid boom in its economy in over 11 years

Singapore registered the strongest economic growth in the country’s history in over 11 years and hit the stat in the second quarter of this year, which is helping in rebounding the economy from its worst economic growth on record amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The Southeast Asian economy soared by more than 14.3% in the second quarter in comparison to the period a year ago. The performance has slightly exceeded the forecasts for the quarter pegged at 14.2% year-on-year by analysts.

The strong growth was recorded due to the low base registered in the second quarter of 2020 wherein the GDP plummeted by 13.2% due to the Circuit Breaker (CB) measures that were implemented from 7 April all the way to 1 June 2020. Circuit breaker refers to implementation of partial lockdown in Singapore, wherein large areas of the economy had to shut for slowing down the spread of the virus. However, in comparison to previous quarter, the economy shrank by more than 2%. The Ministry of Trade added that in absolute terms, GDP for the April-to-June period in 2021 has remained 0.9% which is far below the second quarter for the year 2019 before the pandemic.

Some of the sectors like, Goods-producing industries registered growth of 22.2% in comparison to last year, however reduced by 2.5% compared to the first quarter. Along the same lines, the services sector grew by 9.7% from the past year, but contracted 0.9% in contrast to the first quarter. Similarly, manufacturing sector soared by 18.4% when comparing with the period a year ago, and plummeted by 1.8% from the first quarter.

Singapore has been witnessing a resurgence in COVID-19 cases this year, which has prompted the government to undertake some actions for tightening the social-distancing norms in Early-May. The government and respective authorities have started gradually relieving the restrictions imposed earlier.