Singapore’s non-oil domestic exports rose 20.7 percent in June from a year earlier, Enterprise Singapore said on Friday, July 17. The agency tied the gain to “robust AI-related demand.”
The figure is lower than May’s 38.4 percent. Electronics still carried it. Electronic exports were up 105.1 percent in June, after a 94.8 percent rise the month before, driven mainly by integrated circuits, disk media products and PCs. Integrated circuits grew 115.4 percent, disk media products 170.9 percent and PCs 95.8 percent.
Everything else fell
Non-electronic exports dropped 2.9 percent, reversing a 17.7 percent gain in May. Lower sales of non-monetary gold, petrochemicals and food preparations led the decline.
Selena Ling, chief economist and head of research at OCBC Group, blamed broad weakness across those sectors. “This meant that the resilient June NODX was single-handedly powered by electronics exports due to the AI boom,” she said. She called June’s electronics growth the strongest since 1998.
Markets and totals
Shipments to Taiwan, the United States and South Korea all rose. By Ling’s count, exports to each of Singapore’s top 10 markets grew, with Taiwan expanding at a triple-digit pace for the second month running. Indonesia, which buys mostly non-electronics, edged up 2.7 percent after a run of declines. Ling read that as “some tentative stabilisation in import demand.”
Non-oil re-exports climbed 60.3 percent, after 33.5 percent in May, and were again led by electronics. Total merchandise trade grew 49.3 percent to S$158.1 billion (US$122.5 billion), made up of S$85.5 billion in exports and S$72.6 billion in imports. Exports rose 48.9 percent and imports 49.8 percent.
OCBC sees room to raise its 2026 forecast of 6 percent growth in non-oil domestic exports, given the first half. Ling said AI investment still “appears to have some legs to run in the near-term” despite stock market jitters, and that the picture stays bright even if growth slows in the second half.
