Business sentiment among Singapore's manufacturers has turned gloomy, the latest polls showed on Friday.
The Economic Development Board said in a quarterly survey among manufacturers that a net weighted balance of 18 percent of them are expecting less favorable business conditions in the next six months, compared to a net weighted balance of one percent saying prospects will be positive, in the previous survey.
Singapore's manufacturing output, accounting for a quarter of its economy, fell 8.5 percent in the third quarter of this year, the worst performance in seven years and electronics exports have declined for 20 months in a row.
Manufacturers in all clusters showed weaker levels of confidence due in part of to the decline in worldwide economic conditions arising from the global financial crisis, said the survey.
But the fall in the confidence level was the steepest in the chemicals cluster, with a net weighted balance of 34 percent of them saying they expect less favorable business conditions.
A net weighted balance of 3 percent of manufacturers say they will hire less in the fourth quarter. This is compared to a net weighted 4 percent of manufacturers in the previous survey, who said they would hire more workers.
The net weighted balance is calculated by deducting the proportion of businesses that expressed negative expectations, from those that expressed positive expectations.
Singapore's central bank said this week that the city-state's economy, which entered a recession in the third quarter, faces "a more advanced stage of weakness" in the next year as the global economic slowdown affects it exports, manufacturing and tourism.
Source:Xinhua
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