SINGAPORE, Feb. 14 (Xinhua) -- Singapore's international total merchandise trade grew 11.1 percent to 967 billion Singapore dollars (about 732.88 billion US dollars) last year, government agency International Enterprise Singapore announced Wednesday.
The figure is higher than the 870 billion Singapore dollars and 915 billion Singapore dollars of merchandise trade in 2016 and 2015 respectively, which went down 4.9 percent and 8.9 percent, said the agency, which promotes international trade and partners Singapore companies to go global.
Both exports and imports of merchandise trade expanded by 10.3 percent and 12.1 percent respectively in 2017, while both oil and non-oil trade contributed to total merchandise trade growth.
Singapore's non-oil domestic exports (NODX) rose 8.8 percent last year, compared to the 2.8 percent decline in 2016, due to higher exports of electronic and non-electronic domestic exports.
In a break down, the electronic domestic exports grew eight percent in 2017, compared to the four percent decline in 2016; and the non-electronic domestic exports grew 9.2 percent, compared to the 2.3 percent decline in the previous year.
Among the top NODX markets of Singapore, Chinese mainland, Republic of Korea and Malaysia were major contributors to the NODX increase in 2017, according to the authority. The NODX to them grew 31.1 percent, 43.5 percent and 12.9 percent year on year, respectively.
Meanwhile, the non-oil re-exports (NORX) increased by 5.5 percent year on year last year, after the 3.1 percent decrease in 2016.
Singapore's oil domestic exports grew by 33.4 percent year on year in 2017, following the 12.6 percent decline in the preceding year.
The authority said the pace of growth for both NODX and total trade was expected to moderate in 2018 from the strong performance in 2017, as some of Singapore's key trade partners, such as Chinese mainland, Japan, some of the newly industrialized economies and the Euro zone, would have moderated or unchanged economic growth in 2018.
Thus, it adjusted this year's growth projection for NODX and total trade upwards to one-to-three percent and to three-to-five percent respectively.(1 Singapore dollar equals to 0.76 U.S. dollar)
