AFP reports that Singapore’s trade-sensitive economy has declined for a second straight quarter which means that the city-state has entered a recession for the first time in six years.
Singapore’s Ministry of Trade and Industry estimated that on a seasonally adjusted quarter-on-quarter annualised basis, real GDP declined by 6.3 percent in the third quarter after contracting 5.7 percent in the previous quarter.
Though the Ministry did not describe the economy as being in recession, a technical recession is generally defined as two consecutive quarters of quarter-on-quarter contractions in economic output. Singapore’s last technical recession occurred in 2002, and the most recent full-scale recession was in 2001 when the economy contracted 2.4 percent during the year.