SINGAPORE (AP) -- Singapore's manufacturing jumped in July as the city-state broke out of a severe recession.
Industrial production rose 12.4 percent from a year earlier and soared a seasonally adjusted 23 percent from June, the Trade and Industry Ministry said in a statement Wednesday.
The ministry says pharmaceuticals production, which accounts for about a fifth of Singapore's industrial production, rose 139 percent from a year earlier while electronics, which is about a fourth of manufacturing, fell 5.6 percent.
The July figures were "nothing short of spectacular," said Robert Prior-Wandesforde, senior Asia economist with HSBC in Singapore.
The surge in manufacturing suggests the Singapore economy will grow for a second straight quarter in the July to September period. Gross domestic product expanded an annualized seasonally adjusted 20.7 percent in the second quarter, the first growth in a year.
"It looks increasingly as though the third quarter will also see a very powerful expansion," Prior-Wandesforde said.
