Singapore’s economy shrank by an annualised rate of 5.8% in the first quarter of this year, official figures show, after the drugs sector slowed. The drop in gross domestic product (GDP) was far worse than the markets had been expecting, and the weakest since the Sars crisis of 2003. The government had already forecast that the pharmaceutical industry would see flat growth in 2005. The sector has been hit by competition from generic drug producers. Analysts had expected that Singapore’s economy would only decline by an annualised rate of 0.8% during the first quarter, after 7.9% growth in the last three months of 2003.
