The first quarter of this year saw Singapore’s economy contracting less than thought earlier, thus pointing an improvement in economic activity in March.

A contraction in the country’s GDP by 14.6% was witnessed compared with the previous three months. This is better than the 19.7% fall estimated by the government in April.

It won’t be wrong to say that the year -on-year contraction of 10.1% which is an improvement over the previous estimate of 11.5%.

However, it is still being hoped by the government that there would a drop in GDP of between 6% and 9% for 2009.

Kit Wei Zheng from Citigroup said, “The data should convince sceptics that the most pessimistic scenario has been kept at bay.”

Quite an adverse hit has been experienced by Singapore during the downturn since its exports fell significantly.

(via TopNews Singapore. Contributed by Parminder Singh)