Singapore's Key Exports Up 0.2% in 2024; Downside Risks Weigh on 2025 Forecast

Enterprise Singapore warns that "significant uncertainties" from trade frictions among major economies could result in a more challenging and competitive trade environment, and pose a downside risk to its 2025 non-oil domestic exports forecast.

- Angela Tan

Singapore's key exports managed to claw back into positive territory in 2024, reversing a contraction in 2023, but downside risks weigh on 2025's forecast for higher growth in the face of a potential trade war.

Enterprise Singapore in its trade review report released on Feb 14 kept its 2025 forecast for growth in non-oil domestic exports (Nodx) at 1 per cent to 3 per cent, saying the external outlook remains supportive for the global economy and trade.

However, it warned that "significant uncertainties" from trade frictions among major economies could result in a more challenging and competitive trade environment, and pose a downside risk to its 2025 Nodx forecast.

Nodx grew 0.2 per cent in 2024 from a 13.1 per cent contraction in the previous year. Growth, though, came below the official forecast of "around 1 per cent".

In the fourth quarter of 2024, the Singapore economy grew by a better-than-expected 5 per cent year on year, taking full-year growth to 4.4 per cent, faster than the 1.8 per cent recorded in 2023.