SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Singapore said on Monday that the coronavirus outbreak will hurt its economy this year, as it announced new measures to tackle the disease which originated in China and has spread to the city-state and several other countries.
The Southeast Asian travel and tourism hub, which recorded its lowest growth rate in a decade last year at 0.7%, has reported four cases of the coronavirus that has killed 80 people in China so far.
“We certainly expect there to be an impact on our economy, business and consumer confidence this year especially as the situation is expected to persist for some time,” trade minister Chan Chun Sing said.
The government is considering support measures for hard-hit sectors like tourism which could include property tax, rebates and worker levy cuts, he added.
Chinese nationals make up the largest share of visitors to Singapore, one of the worst hit countries outside of China in the 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) which killed 800 people globally.
Singapore is currently forecasting growth in a wide range of 0.5-2.5% this year.
Chan is part of a government taskforce set up to tackle the coronavirus spread in Singapore.
The taskforce also announced a raft of new measures on Monday to halt the spread of the virus, including urging all school students and staff with a recent travel history to China to stay at home for a fortnight. Families in Singapore, many of which are ethnically Chinese and have relatives in mainland China, are currently traveling for Lunar New Year holidays.
It also issued a new advisory for travelers to defer all non-essential travel to mainland China and said it will start temperature screening all inbound flights to Singapore.
The death toll in China from the coronavirus grew to 80 on Monday as residents of the Hubei province, where the disease originated, were banned from entering Hong Kong amid global efforts to halt the rapid spread of the outbreak.
The virus has so far spread to more than 10 countries including the United States, Japan and France.
(Reporting by Aradhana Aravindan; Writing by John Geddie; Editing by Tom Hogue & Shri Navaratnam)
OTTAWA – The parliamentary budget officer says the federal government likely failed to keep its deficit below its promised $40 billion cap in the last fiscal year.
However the PBO also projects in its latest economic and fiscal outlook today that weak economic growth this year will begin to rebound in 2025.
The budget watchdog estimates in its report that the federal government posted a $46.8 billion deficit for the 2023-24 fiscal year.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland pledged a year ago to keep the deficit capped at $40 billion and in her spring budget said the deficit for 2023-24 stayed in line with that promise.
The final tally of the last year’s deficit will be confirmed when the government publishes its annual public accounts report this fall.
The PBO says economic growth will remain tepid this year but will rebound in 2025 as the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts stimulate spending and business investment.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.
OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says the level of food insecurity increased in 2022 as inflation hit peak levels.
In a report using data from the Canadian community health survey, the agency says 15.6 per cent of households experienced some level of food insecurity in 2022 after being relatively stable from 2017 to 2021.
The reading was up from 9.6 per cent in 2017 and 11.6 per cent in 2018.
Statistics Canada says the prevalence of household food insecurity was slightly lower and stable during the pandemic years as it fell to 8.5 per cent in the fall of 2020 and 9.1 per cent in 2021.
In addition to an increase in the prevalence of food insecurity in 2022, the agency says there was an increase in the severity as more households reported moderate or severe food insecurity.
It also noted an increase in the number of Canadians living in moderately or severely food insecure households was also seen in the Canadian income survey data collected in the first half of 2023.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct 16, 2024.
OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says manufacturing sales in August fell to their lowest level since January 2022 as sales in the primary metal and petroleum and coal product subsectors fell.
The agency says manufacturing sales fell 1.3 per cent to $69.4 billion in August, after rising 1.1 per cent in July.
The drop came as sales in the primary metal subsector dropped 6.4 per cent to $5.3 billion in August, on lower prices and lower volumes.
Sales in the petroleum and coal product subsector fell 3.7 per cent to $7.8 billion in August on lower prices.
Meanwhile, sales of aerospace products and parts rose 7.3 per cent to $2.7 billion in August and wood product sales increased 3.8 per cent to $3.1 billion.
Overall manufacturing sales in constant dollars fell 0.8 per cent in August.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 16, 2024.
