Singapore Weekly 20260302
Singapore business, finance and trade news, every Monday.
Tehran Burns, Asia Braces
Israel and the United States together attacked Iran on February 28, triggering retaliatory strikes across the Middle East and causing ripple effects throughout Southeast Asia. Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong, speaking shortly after the strikes began at a Chinese New Year dinner, warned that energy prices are going to rise and the inevitable uncertainty will put a damper on trade and investment across the region. "You can see when the war will start," he told residents. "It is very hard to tell how the war will end." For a small, open economy that grew 5 percent last year on the back of stable global trade, the shocks of Middle East war and US protectionism are going to hit hard. The Immigration and Checkpoints Authority stepped up checks on arriving travelers, cargo, and conveyances at all land, air, and sea checkpoints the same day; they’re telling travelers to expect delays.
Read more: Straits Times, CNA (tariff rate increase), CNA (checkpoint security measures), AsiaOne (Supreme Court ruling)
One Baby Per Two Women
The total fertility rate hit a record low of 0.87 in 2025, down from 0.97 in 2024 and 1.24 a decade ago, Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong told parliament on Feb 26. Chinese births fell 15 percent year-on-year, partly a pullback after 2024's Dragon Year bump, but the trend has Gan calling it an "existential challenge." One in five citizens is at least 65 years old, (it was one in eight ten years ago), and without action the citizen count will start shrinking by the early 2040s. Singapore’s small size makes the country "exceptionally sensitive" to demographic shifts, Gan said, and over time there will simply be fewer women of childbearing age.
Read more: Business Times
Seoul Comes Calling Again
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung arrived yesterday for a three-day state visit, his second summit with PM Lawrence Wong in four months since the pair upgraded ties to a strategic partnership during Wong's trip to South Korea in November. Monday's agenda will be on AI, nuclear energy, and defense cooperation, with MoUs planned for trade, energy security, and tech. Lee will meet President Tharman Shanmugaratnam and attend AI Connect, a business forum for AI entrepreneurs from both countries. Korea is clearly betting on the city-state as its Southeast Asian anchor for next-generation industries; Wong made his first official trip to Seoul as prime minister just four months ago.
Read more: CNA, Straits Times, Korea Times, Yonhap, Chosun
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Chip Boom Lifts the Factory Floor
Factory output was up 16.6% y-o-y in January, ahead of the 12.1% consensus and the sharpest spike since November 2025. Electronics rose 44% for the month, more than doubling December's 19.6% gain. If you strip out the volatile biomedical cluster, industrial production was up almost a quarter over last year. Economists are now expecting full-year GDP growth at 3.6%, up from December's more restrained 2.3% forecast. The consensus view is that global AI infrastructure spending, with tech firms expected to lift CAPEX by 30%, will keep the momentum going through at least mid-year.
Read more: Business Times (January data), Business Times (MAS policy outlook)
Last Orders for Deliveroo
DoorDash is pulling the plug on Deliveroo after a decade, and service is coming to an end on March 4. The exit comes after what the parent company said was a "multi-month review" focused on markets with the clearest path to scale, though it insists the decision isn't about business performance. That framing sits awkwardly with Deliveroo's single-digit market share since late 2022. Deliveroo is also closing shop in Qatar, Japan and Uzbekistan as DoorDash narrows its geographic footprint. The pullout leaves Grab and foodpanda to split the local delivery market, a duopoly that bears watching even if prices aren't likely to move much in the short term.
Read more: Business Times
Banks Open the Taps
Local companies paid out a record $18.7 billion in dividends last year, up 19.1% from 2024, with banks driving most of the increase through special payouts. DBS and other lenders handed shareholders extra cash on top of their regular dividends, reflecting what Capital Group calls "strong trading and capital positions." The boost helped offset Singapore Airlines' dividend cut and pushed dividend growth well above the 6% global average. Core growth was just 2.1%, meaning most of the jump came from those one-time bank bonuses, but the headline number was still the highest payout since Capital Group started tracking in 2015.
Read more: Business Times
Zero Down, All Risk
Car dealers are hawking S$0 upfront financing on Instagram and Facebook, getting around loan-to-value limits through inflated invoices and unregulated in-house loans. Outstanding motor vehicle loans are now sitting at a 12-year high of S$12.4 billion. One dealer promised 100% guaranteed approval without any cash down. Neither MAS nor the dealers' association has indicated any appetite for a crackdown (yet). INSEAD's Ben Charoenwong is blunt about the invoice inflation scheme, saying "[It’s] not a creative financing structure. That's deception."
Read more: Business Times
DBS Turns the Screws on Fintech Rivals
DBS will jack up the fees it charges fintech firms for custodian services starting in April, hitting payment service providers with higher costs for the privilege of holding customer funds in virtual accounts. The Payments Services Act requires the biggest payment institutions to keep client money in segregated accounts, which means most fintech firms need a custodian bank whether they like it or not. The higher costs are coming just as local payment startups are finishing years of expensive regulatory compliance, so… not ideal, but could be worse.
Read more: Business Times
Uncle Sam's Eyes in the Sky
Four P-8A Poseidons are headed to Singapore after Washington cleared the sale in January, replacing a fleet of Fokker 50s that have been on patrol for more than three decades. The value of the deal was not disclosed. The Poseidons come with advanced radar, acoustic processing, electro-optical sensors and anti-submarine weaponry, in addition to the endurance to loiter over the Malacca Strait and South China Sea for extended periods. The aircraft will share standards and doctrine with the U.S., Australia and the UK, all of which already fly the platform. Singapore’s position at the choke point where the Malacca Strait meets the South China Sea makes persistent maritime surveillance less of a luxury and more of an existential need.
Read more: Indo-Pacific Defense Forum
Training Wheels Go Begging
Applications for the GRIT graduate traineeship program have dropped 90% since its October launch, with about half of the 800 slots still empty. Manpower Minister Tan See Leng is trying to portray the decline as good news, saying graduates are landing full-time jobs instead, though none of the first batch who started in December have converted to permanent roles yet.
Read more: Business Times
That's all for this week, thanks for reading. Your voice matters to us. Feel we're missing something? Have additional sources to suggest? Don't hold back - hit reply and tell us what you think.
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