File photo: CGTN

SINGAPORE, April 24 (Xinhua) -- Singapore Economic Development Board announced on Friday that the country's manufacturing output grew 16.5 percent year-on-year in March, compared to a revised 0.7-percent decline in February.

In the first quarter, the output rose 6.6 percent year on year.

Excluding biomedical manufacturing, the output was unchanged in March from a year ago, compared to a 2.2-percent decline in the previous month.

On a seasonally adjusted month-on-month basis, Singapore's manufacturing output increased 21.7 percent in March. Excluding biomedical manufacturing, the output grew 2.5 percent.

The biomedical manufacturing cluster made the best performance in March. Its output expanded 91.4 percent year-on-year in the month.

In a breakdown of this cluster, the pharmaceuticals segment's output increased 126.6 percent year-on-year, on the back of higher production of active pharmaceutical ingredients and biological products. The medical technology segment's output rose 6.3 percent with higher export demand for medical devices.

As for the performance of other clusters, the electronics cluster's output decreased 9.2 percent year-on-year in March. Meanwhile, the precision engineering cluster's output expanded 21.2 percent year-on-year, the transport engineering cluster's output increased 7.6 percent, the chemicals cluster's output rose 0.8 percent, and the general manufacturing industries cluster's output decreased 7.9 percent.