(Bloomberg) -- Singapore’s economic growth slowed and home prices fell toward the end of last year as global trade tensions and rising interest rates took their toll on the export-reliant city state.

Gross domestic product rose an annualized 1.6 percent in the three months through December from the third quarter, easing from a revised 3.5 percent gain previously, according to an advance estimate from the Ministry of Trade and Industry Wednesday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of economists was for a 3.6 percent expansion.

Key Insights

Economists’ Views

• Manufacturing, which contracted an annualized 8.7 percent in the fourth quarter “appears to have been the main culprit here,” said Vishnu Varathan, head of economics and strategy in Singapore for Mizuho Bank. “The broader question on 2019 is the most pertinent one here -- and the elephant in the room after China’s PMI manufacturing slumped to three-year lows.”
• “There could be one more tightening, but uncertainty over whether April or October" in terms of timing, said OCBC’s Ling. “For now the slowdown has been largely in line with their expectations, and the growth trajectory for 2019 is for a further deceleration -- so nothing out of the blue here. The key really remains core inflation.”

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• GDP rose 2.2 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, the slowest pace all year
• For a more a detailed breakdown of how sectors performed, see this table: Singapore Fourth Quarter GDP Advance Estimates (Table). Construction saw weakness in public sector building activities, while services growth was mainly supported by the finance and insurance, business services and information and communications sectors
• The advance GDP estimates are computed largely from data in the first two months of the quarter, and are usually revised once the full quarter’s data are available
• The Singapore dollar was little changed after the data. For potential market reaction: Watch These Singapore Stocks After Fourth-Quarter GDP Miss; Singapore Real Estate Stocks May Move as Residential Prices Fall; Rallying Singapore Dollar Can Shrug Off GDP Miss

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