Singapore's manufacturing output in April grew 18.8 percent from a year ago, riding on strong growth from the biomedical manufacturing and transport engineering clusters, the government said on Friday.

According to a statement by the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), the seasonally adjusted index for April was up almost 8.0 percent from March.

The biomedical manufacturing cluster rebounded from its contraction in March. Spearheading the jump of 98.5 percent in April's output over April last year was the pharmaceuticals segment, the EDB said.

The EDB added that the production of active pharmaceutical ingredients shot up by 120.5 percent this April due to the very low output level last April.

The transport engineering cluster grew 24.4 percent, the fourth consecutive monthly year-on-year growth. It was contributed by all three segments, including the aerospace, land and marine segment.

The electronics cluster's output in April increased 7.4 percent compared to April last year, boosted mainly by the 18.0 percent increase in the production of semiconductors.

The chemicals cluster grew 4.1 percent year-on-year in April while the general manufacturing industries grew 11.3 percent in the same month.

The precision engineering cluster contracted 2.5 percent year- on-year in April. This came from the contractions of 1.4 percent and 3.2 percent for the machinery and systems segment and precision modules and components segment respectively.

Cumulatively, total output in the first four months this year rose 7.8 percent compared to the same period last year.

Source: Xinhua