MAS Blinks First, Chips Carry the Load

The central bank tightens for the first time since 2022, exports surge on AI chip demand, births hit a record low, and one shovel knocks 5,000 offline

Apr 20, 2026

Singapore business, finance and trade news, every Monday.

Marina Sand Bay, Singapore — Photo by Walter Cheung on Unsplash

MAS Blinks First as Hormuz Hits Home

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) tightened monetary policy on April 14 for the first time since October 2022, steepening the slope of the S$NEER policy band as the Iran war's energy shock starts working through the economy. The tightening was expected (15/18 economists polled by Bloomberg called it), but an inflation forecast change sting. MAS raised its core and headline CPI range to 1.5-2.5 per cent for 2026, up from the 1-2 per cent range it set three months ago. The growth picture is murkier. Q1 GDP came in at 4.6 per cent y-o-y against a median forecast of 5.8 per cent, and contracted 0.3 per cent on a seasonally adjusted quarterly basis. Manufacturing led the pullback, swinging from 4.5 per cent sequential growth to a 4.9 per cent contraction. The full-year outlook looks like it will come in at 2.5 to 3.5 per cent, MAS will update its own forecast again next month. At least one more tightening move is expected this year, analysts are split between deciding if that will come in July or October.

Read more: Business Times (Brent figure), Business Times (July vs October), Business Times (MTI release date), Business Times (sector breakdown)

Chips Do the Heavy Lifting

Non-oil domestic exports rose 15.3% in March, the seventh straight month of growth, blowing past analyst forecasts of 8.1% on the back of a 74% year-on-year electronics increase. Semiconductors were the engine: integrated circuit shipments more than doubled, up 113.8%, with chips alone making up S$1.7 billion ($1.3 billion) of the S$3.1 billion ($2.3 billion) in electronics exports for the month. AI demand is carrying the number, TSMC already has upped its 2026 revenue outlook on it. The Iran war, now in its second month, hasn't visibly hampered any of this yet, but there is a catch in the that’s waiting. The sector runs on helium, and Qatar is one of the world's biggest suppliers. The Singapore Semiconductor Industry Association says nobody is squawking yet, but a prolonged conflict would eventually squeeze margins. Non-electronics exports slipped 0.6%, a much narrower drop than February's 6.9%.

Read more: Straits Times (exports), Business Times (disk/PC figures), Business Times (industry quotes)

To USTR: Check Your Math

MTI sent two written submissions to the USTR on April 15, pushing back on Section 301 investigations into forced labor and industrial overcapacity. The numbers it brought are awkward for Washington. The US ran a goods surplus of $3.6 billion and $29.6 billion respectively in 2025. Singapore is home to 6,600 American companies which support more than 250,000 US jobs, and that the State Department's own 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report which puts Singapore in its Tier 1 (that’s the good one!). Pharmaceuticals, the lone sector where the US runs a deficit with Singapore, saw its trade gap narrow from $17.7 billion in 2024 to $12.9 billion in 2025.

Read more: Business Times (capacity utilization), Business Times (jobs)

Changi Shrugs Off Middle East Woes

Changi notched 17.6 million passenger movements in Q1 2026, up 2.3% year-on-year, a number that looks unremarkable until you factor in that it absorbed a collapse in Middle East traffic of 80% in March alone. The airport didn't paper over the gap so much as route around it. Vietnam and China were the standout performers in the top ten markets, rising 26.5% and 17.7% respectively. Airlines added roughly 90 additional flights to cities including Frankfurt, London, Paris and Sydney during the March disruption. The top five markets for the quarter were China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia and India, a lineup that tells its own story about where demand is coming from. Airfreight throughput was 517,000 tons for the quarter, up 7.6% year-on-year; exports and imports were both higher than Q1 2025. The trailing 12-month passenger count through March was 70.4 million, the highest ever recorded over any 12-month window at Changi.

Small States Pick Up the Megaphone

Burhan Gafoor, Singapore's Permanent Representative to the UN, gave a joint statement at the General Assembly on April 16 on behalf of Fiji, Jamaica, Malta and Singapore, calling on all parties to restore unimpeded transit through the Strait of Hormuz. The presentation came after Russia and China vetoed a Security Council resolution on April 7 that had cleared 11-2 (Pakistan and Colombia abstained). The four countries presented their position frankly by saying that they had worked substantively to negotiating UNCLOS in 1982 and continue to have an abiding interest in its enforcement. Iran has largely closed the strait to non-Iranian shipping since US-Israeli airstrikes began on February 28, and while an April 8 ceasefire was meant to temporarily reopen it, follow-up talks in Pakistan ended without a deal.

Fuel Insurance Policy Gets an AUS Signature

Four ministers from Singapore and Australia said on April 17 that the two countries have "substantially concluded" a Protocol on Economic Resilience and Essential Supplies, a formal add-on to their existing FTA. The protocol commits both sides to refrain from export restrictions on petroleum oils including diesel and LNG during supply disruptions. The same package formalises the Australia-Singapore Economic Resilience Dialogue as the working mechanism. It will enter into force once both governments complete their domestic processes.

You Can't Birth Them Overnight

Singapore tallied only 27,500 births in 2025, the lowest number ever, as the fertility rate dropped to a flaccid 0.87. DPM Gan Kim Yong told Parliament the population will start shrinking in the early 2040s if nothing changes, saying it’s an "existential challenge." The government's near-term answer is giving 25,000 to 30,000 new citizenships, and an additional ~40,000 new PRs, in each of the next five years. That will add up to 70,000 people yearly. "You can't overnight give birth to young people," Gan said.

One Shovel Sends Five Thousand Offline

A contractor drilling bored piles for the North-South Corridor hit fibre cables at just before 11 AM on April 18, knocking out broadband for about 5,000 users in Ang Mo Kio, Bishan, Sengkang and Punggol for 20 hours. Singtel, StarHub, M1 and MyRepublic all went down together. The damage went further than most noticed, as LTA's bus ETA system runs on the same fibre, and stops in the affected districts started showing phantom arrival times. NetLink Trust crews worked through wet weather overnight to get service back by 7am Sunday. IMDA is investigating under the Telecommunications Act, the same law that fined subcontractor 2K International a hefty S$314,000 ($233,000) earlier this year for a nearly identical 19-hour outage in 2019.

Read more: CNA (restoration), Straits Times (benchmark stats), CNA (outage timeline), CNA (bus ETA)

695 Speeders a Day, Footpaths Aren't Much Safer

Traffic deaths came in at a 10-year high of 149 last year (up from 142 the year before), and speeding cases rose from 201,358 to 253,550. That’s almost 700 drivers knicked daily. On the footpaths, LTA netted 308 cyclist and PMD offenses in a single month and impounded 100 devices, drawing more than 270 online comments, many saying that the situation is much worse than the numbers indicate. Some commenters claimed errant riders get tipped off through Telegram and WhatsApp groups before operations start, with one asserting that more than 90% of scofflaws fled once word got out.

Read more: Yahoo News SG (policy), The Independent Singapore (public evasion)

War Jitters Create Penthouse Shoppers

Luxury condos in Singapore's Core Central Region priced at S$5 million ($3.8 million) and up were traded 75 times in Q1 2026, the strongest quarter since Q4 2023, when 84 changed hands. New sales totaled S$400 million ($305 million), up from S$330 million in Q4 2025. River Modern's launch accounted for 38 of those deals. Buyers are looking atl ocal penthouses as safe-haven assets as the Middle East burns. Good Class Bungalow deals told a different story, sliding to four transactions from nine, though one in the Gallop Road area still raised S$31.5 million ($24 million).

Overqualified and Loving It

Nearly one in five resident workers held jobs below their qualification level in 2025, up from 16.3 percent a decade ago, and about nine in ten of are there by choice. The Ministry of Manpower and NTUC put out studies on April 14 suggesting this turn of events is a feature, not a bug. They say that workers are choosing to trade credential-matched roles for more stability, flexible hours, and whatever else sparks their fancy. The involuntary slice, which is made up of workers who want better-matched work but can't find it, was reported at just 1.7 percent. Workers under 30 are the most mismatched, with 29.7 percent of that cohort reportedly overqualified.

Ten Cents to Save the Can

Return Right, the national deposit return scheme first floated by a citizen workgroup in 2019, went live on the simple premise of a 10-cent refundable deposit on eligible bottles and cans. BCRS Ltd, a not-for-profit set up by industry and licensed by the National Environment Agency, is running the operation, built to handle more than a billion containers annually to recover as much as 16,000 tonnes of material. Containers that show the Deposit Mark are coming into the market now, existing stock without the mark is still on shelves and won't qualify for refunds.

Singapore Weekly

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