SINGAPORE, July 27: Singapore’s all-important manufacturing sector shot up 18.9 per cent in June despite a weak performance in electronics, Economic Development Board (EDB) figures showed Saturday.

Giving a significant boost was the biomedical sector, with a 137.6 per cent increase over the same month in 2001, the EDB said.

But electronics, which account for 38 per cent of total manufacturing value in export-driven Singapore, increased a mere 2.1 per cent, hit by declines in personal computer production and sales of telecommunications products and consumer electronics.

“Singapore’s electronics trade and production seems to gel with the weak tone in the data from (South) Korea and Taiwan,” JP Morgan economist Rajeev Malik said.

“Collectively, these indicate that the electronics rebound is beginning to moderate after strong growth in the first half of 2002,” he added.

While June’s positive electronics number was the third consecutive year-on-year rise, output was down by a significant 3.9 per cent in seasonally adjusted terms, compared with the preceding month.

The biomedical-sciences cluster’s surge was driven by a 168.5-per- cent rise in pharmaceutical production.

“The government’s policy of reducing dependence on the electronics sector is paying dividends,” OCBC Bank economist Suan Teck Kin said.

The figures suggested the government’s advance second-quarter GDP estimate of 3.2 per cent growth will likely be revised upwards, economists said.

They warned, however, against too much reliance on the biomedical sector, noting production of drugs to treat illnesses such as asthma and arthritis had a long way to go before replacing the likes of computers and disk drives as the city-state’s main export.

While the electronics sector typically generates thousands of jobs in smaller supporting industries, economists noted the trickle-down affect applies much less in the biomedical sector, which still accounts for only 12 per cent of manufacturing.—dpa