Singapore, the world’s second-richest country by GDP per capita in 2025 according to The Economistsaw its non-oil domestic exports (NODX) rise 38.4% year-on-year in May, extending April’s 24.4% increase as demand linked to AI continued to fuel trade growth, data from Enterprise Singapore on Wednesday showed.
DBS economist Chua Han Teng said the May figure marked the strongest expansion since December 2003.
Electronics exports led the increase, with electronics NODX surging 94.8% year-on-year in May, accelerating from a 66.7% rise in April. Growth was driven by integrated circuits, disk media products and personal computers, The Straits Times reported.
Aerial view of Marina Bay Sands and Singapore skyline. Photo from Pexels |
Zavier Wong, a market analyst at eToro, attributed the strong performance to rising demand from major U.S. technology companies including Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta and Amazon. He said the four companies raised their combined 2026 capital expenditure plans to more than US$700 billion in late April, up 77% from 2025 levels.
As an electronics-exporting economy, Singapore has long benefited from global technology demand, but the scale and concentration of recent growth are different, Wong said. “The export profile is reshaped by AI, though what we’re really seeing is an extreme acceleration of something that is already part of Singapore’s DNA,” Channel News Asia quoted him as saying.
In May, exports of integrated circuits rose 80.9% year-on-year, while disk media products and personal computers increased 227.8% and 140.9%, respectively. Industry experts said the gains reflected growing investment in AI-related hardware, including semiconductors, data centers, high-performance computing systems, memory and storage technologies.
Analysts expect non-oil exports to remain in positive territory in the near term, although growth is unlikely to maintain the same pace every month.
Ang Wee Seng, executive director of the Singapore Semiconductor Industry Association, cautioned that growth may moderate in the second half of the year due to tougher year-earlier comparisons and external risks such as tariffs and geopolitical tensions.
Wong said electronics exports “look durable” as long as spending by hyperscale cloud-computing companies remains strong.
He said demand should continue to be supported by investment in AI infrastructure, but warned that the sector’s growing reliance on a small group of major customers remains a vulnerability.
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