Singapore's factory output in July grew on the back of solid demand for artificial intelligence, although it was weaker compared to the prior month.
The manufacturing production grew 6.8% year on year, easing from the 7.5% yearly rise in June, according to data from the Singapore Economic Development Board published Wednesday.
This month's growth beat Investing.com's estimates of 6.7%.
Excluding biomedical manufacturing, the manufacturing output rose 8% from the prior year.
Almost all clusters posted year-on-year growth in July, with precision engineering recording the highest with a 17.7% rise due to continued demand for AI-related systems. Higher production of chips and semiconductor components, as well as optical instruments, electronic connectors and metal precision components, was the key driver for boosting the cluster's output.
Electronics came in second with a 11.2% growth as infocomms and consumer electronics saw an increase in production.
Meanwhile, land and aerospace equipment production brought the transport engineering cluster to third place, with a 10.8% growth.
However, biomedical manufacturing fell 5.3% due to weaker export orders for medical devices, while there was a different mix of active pharmaceutical ingredients being manufactured.
Softer demand for petroleum and petrochemicals, as well as factory maintenance works and feedstock supply disruptions, also brought chemical output lower by 10.6%.
