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Singapore: monetary policy unchanged

Given this year’s stable growth and inflation, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced its intent to maintain “modest and gradual appreciations” in the currency policy band to mitigate risks of price fluctuation.
Given this year’s stable growth and inflation, the Monetary Authorityof Singapore (MAS) announced its intent to maintain “modest and gradualappreciations” in the currency policy band to mitigate risks of pricefluctuation.

The announcement was made on April14 after the MAS’s surprising move to ease its monetary policy inJanuary, which led to the island dollar’s weakest point since 2010against the US dollar.

The bank also expected national gross domestic product (GDP) to grow by 2 to 4 percent by the end of this year.

The same day, the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) estimated anannual 2.1 percent growth rate in the first quarter, higher than anearlier 1.8-percent forecast in a Reuters’ economist poll.

The economy grew 1.1 percent from the previous three months on anannual and seasonally-adjusted basis, well below that of the lastquarter of 2014 with 4.9-percent GDP growth, said the MTI.

The manufacturing sector continued to drag down quarter one GDP dueto its 3.4 percent output reduction from 2014 while the service andconstruction sectors expanded annually by 3.1 and 3.3 percent,respectively.-VNA
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