Singapore sees biggest-ever quarterly GDP fall

SINGAPORE, Jan 2, 2009 (AFP) - Singapore's economy could contract by as much as two percent this year, the government said Friday after data showed a deepening recession and the worst quarterly GDP decline on record.
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Real gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 12.5 percent in the fourth quarter, on a seasonally adjusted annualised quarter-on-quarter basis, which the trade ministry said is the biggest fall since records began in 1976.
"The global economic crisis has worsened since November, with sharp declines in global demand, trade and investments," the Ministry of Trade and Industry said in a news release.
It also cited the sharp fourth quarter contraction in the trade-dependent economy for its revised 2009 growth forecast, which now ranges between a contraction of 2.0 percent and expansion of 1.0 percent.
"The fourth quarter was a little bit weaker than most of us were projecting," said David Cohen, director of Asian forecasting at global research house Action Economics.
"This is clearly a major global downturn and Singapore is taking its lumps."
The trade ministry downgraded its previous growth estimate, made in November, which ranged between a contraction of 1.0 percent and expansion of 2.0 percent in 2009.
Singapore in October became the first Asian economy to enter a recession but since then major economies around the world -- including the city-state's key export markets the European Union and United States -- have also seen declining economic activity.
Singapore is Southeast Asia's wealthiest economy in terms of GDP per capita but its heavy dependence on trade makes it sensitive to economic disturbances in developed economies.
The quarter-on-quarter fall in GDP of 12.5 percent compared with a decline of 5.4 percent in the third quarter, the trade ministry said. In the second quarter, the economy fell by 5.7 percent.
Measured against the fourth quarter last year, the economy contracted by 2.6 percent in real terms, after a 0.3 percent year-on-year fall in the third quarter.
GDP is the value of all goods and services produced by an economy.
The fourth-quarter figures are advance estimates based largely on October and November figures. More detailed information is to be released next month.
In his New Year's Day message to the nation on Wednesday, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong warned of "a difficult year ahead" after the economy grew 1.5 percent in 2008.
In 2007 the economy expanded by 7.7 percent, the trade ministry said.
It noted that analysts have lowered their growth forecasts for the United States, Europe and Japan by about one percentage point, while the outlook for regional economies has also deteriorated.
"These developments will affect the sectors in the Singapore economy that rely on the movement of goods and services in the region," the trade ministry said.
Weaker global demand has affected Singapore's electronics and precision engineering industries, pulling the entire manufacturing sector down by an estimated 9.0 percent in the fourth quarter compared to the same time last year, the ministry said.
Chemicals output also fell because of slowing external demand, while growth in the service industries slowed to an estimated 1.1 percent from 5.3 percent in the third quarter, it added.
Cohen said the extent of the slowdown in services was unexpected.
A contraction in industrial building saw construction sector growth slow to 13.3 percent, down from 18.6 in the preceding quarter, the ministry said.
Cohen said his forecast for Singapore has been downgraded to a 2.0 percent contraction this year, from a one-percent shrinkage projected earlier.
"It does look like we're going to see an annual contraction in 2009."
That would leave the economy in its worse shape since 2001 when growth fell by 2.4 percent, according to official data.

BANGKOK (AFP) - - Police forensic investigators sifted through the charred remains of an upscale Bangkok nightclub Thursday, seeking clues to a blaze that killed 58 revellers ringing in the New Year and injured 243.

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Relatives and friends gathered at Bangkok hospitals and outside the popular nightspot desperate for news of loved ones lost or injured in the inferno that gutted the two-storey building.

Police said a Singaporean national was killed and scores of other foreigners -- some from Australia, France, Japan and Britain -- were hospitalised.

The blaze apparently broke out after a firework display at the Santika club in the Thai capital's Ekkamai district, a thronging entertainment hub which is frequented by locals and tourists.

"Police are investigating the incident. It should not take more than two weeks from now to get the result and find the cause of the blaze," said Police General Jongrak Jutanont, deputy national police commissioner.

Police Lieutenant Colonel Prawit Kantwol earlier told AFP that the likely cause was a pyrotechnics show that accompanied the band.

"Most of the victims died from suffocation, but some were also killed in a stampede when people were trying to get out," he added.

About 100 people gathered outside the cordoned-off nightclub, an AFP correspondent said, while inside abandoned shoes and broken bottles littered the floor, testament to the panic inside hours earlier.

"I heard that the electricity went out, so they couldn't find the exit signs to get out," said Ash Sutton from Australia, who was awaiting news of a friend.

"It's horrible, horrible... I couldn't understand why so many people were killed. They must have been trapped upstairs."

The Nation newspaper's website quoted a survivor as saying that the fireworks set the ceiling alight.

"At first, I thought it was an effect, which looked like (the) real thing. Then, someone shouted 'fire, fire' and panic broke out and people ran for their life," said the woman named as Fah.

Jongrak told AFP the nightclub was certified by the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, but said they were still looking into the safety standards.

Police officials said at least 58 people were so far confirmed dead.

A Bangkok emergency services official said 243 people including 29 foreigners had been injured and had been rushed to 19 hospitals across the capital suffering from burns and smoke inhalation.

Japan's Kyodo news agency said four Japanese nationals were injured, one seriously.

A spokeswoman from Britain's Foreign Office said that at least four Britons were hurt in the blaze, while the French foreign ministry said two of its nationals were wounded.

The emergency services official said citizens of Australia, Switzerland and Finland were also injured.

Almost all the dead were on the ground floor, where the stage was located. Thai television showed fireman counting bodies swaddled in white cloth, as rescuers helped bloodied and bandaged revellers.

The club, popular with Bangkok's elite, has a capacity of 1,000 people but it was not clear how many were in there at the time of the blaze.

Fire brigade officials said the death toll was high because there were few exits and the windows on the upper floors had iron bars across them. Some victims were trapped in the basement of the club.

"There was only one main way to get out from the front. People who worked there were able to escape from the back because they knew the exits, but the others had no chance," senior fireman Wacharatpong Sri-Saard said.

Police said the fire broke out between midnight and 1:00am, shortly after revellers had celebrated the coming of the New Year.

The fire was the latest in a series of deadly blazes at nightclubs around the world in recent years.

In 2003 a pyrotechnics display during a concert at the Station nightclub in Rhode Island in the United States set off a blaze that killed 100 people.