Singapore's economy grew 4.3% in the second quarter of 2025: MTI advance estimates
But the ministry flagged "significant uncertainty and downside risks" in the global economy in the second half of the year, given the "lack of clarity" over the United States' tariff policies.
In April, MTI lowered Singapore's GDP growth forecast for 2025 to 0 per cent to 2 per cent, pointing to the effect of US President Donald Trump's tariffs. The ministry previously had a forecast of 1 per cent to 3 per cent growth for the year.
Last week, the Trump administration started sending out letters on tariffs to several countries. The higher tariffs will kick in from Aug 1, and affects Singapore's neighbours such as Malaysia and Indonesia.
Singapore's economic task force, which was set up to help businesses and workers navigate the impact of the US tariffs, announced that it would launch grants for companies by October this year.
Advance gross domestic product estimates are mainly computed from data gathered in the first two months of the quarter. They are intended as an early indicator for the three-month period, and may be revised when more data is available.
On a quarter-on-quarter seasonally-adjusted basis, Singapore's gross domestic product (GDP) expanded by 1.4 per cent in the second quarter, compared with a 0.5 per cent contraction in the first three months of the year.
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CNA
20 minutes ago
- CNA
Crypto exchanges rushed to list Trump's coin - leaving many losers and some big winners
NEW YORK :Crypto exchange Coinbase assures users on its website that it puts any new digital coin through "rigorous" vetting before allowing it to trade. It's an at-times lengthy process meant to protect customers by examining the people connected to the project and the risk of market manipulation or other scams. With President Donald Trump's crypto token, $TRUMP, Coinbase made up its mind in just one day. The $TRUMP token, which launched three days before his inauguration in January, is a meme coin. Based on cultural fads or celebrities, these coins have no intrinsic value and – past experience has shown – are prone to large price swings that can leave investors with losses. A Reuters analysis of crypto market data and industry announcements found that, compared to other recent large meme coins, the biggest crypto exchanges took Trump's to market with unusual speed, despite stating they vet risky coins thoroughly to protect small investors. Some also approved the listing in spite of the high share of coins concentrated in the hands of Trump and his partners, which would normally represent a red flag because of the risk that dumping of tokens by insiders could collapse the price and hurt other investors, some executives said. After reaching an all-time high of $75.35 on April 19, just two days after its launch, $TRUMP crashed to the $7 range by early April, leaving many holders nursing losses. It was trading around $9.55 Thursday. "When the president of the United States launches a meme coin, I thought I might as well put some money inside," said Carl 'Moon' Runefelt, a Dubai-based crypto investor who runs a bitcoin trading channel on YouTube called the "Moon Show." Runefelt said he bought $300,000 worth of the meme coin in tranches at between $50 and $60: "It's probably one of my worst trades, unfortunately." The Reuters analysis showed that eight of the 10 largest crypto exchanges by market share listed the coin within 48 hours of its release. The ninth, Coinbase, added $TRUMP to its listings roadmap on January 18 – indicating it had decided to accept it - and listed the coin three days later. The tenth, Upbit, listed $TRUMP on February 13. That was much faster than they've done on average with the biggest meme coins. Reuters examined how long it took the same 10 exchanges - Binance, Bitget, MEXC, OKX, Coinbase, Bybit, Upbit, and HTX - to list the four other largest meme coins launched since 2022. These, measured by market cap on May 29, are Pepe, Bonk, Fartcoin and dogwifhat. All 10 exchanges listed Pepe and Bonk. Nine listed dogwifhat, and seven listed Fartcoin. On average, the 10 exchanges took 129 days to list those coins. For $TRUMP, they took an average of four. Asked for comment about why they listed $TRUMP so quickly, Bitget, MEXC, OKX, Coinbase and Upbit all said they had not cut any corners with their vetting process. The other five exchanges did not respond to Reuters' questions. Three – Bitget, Coinbase, MEXC – said they moved fast to respond to overwhelming demand for the $TRUMP coin. "The crypto space was buzzing with the hype and, as any other token with a growing craze, it was imperative to add TRUMP," Gracy Chen, Bitget's CEO, said in a statement. Chen said the fact that Trump himself announced the coin on his social media accounts "should kind of solve the compliance issue," citing the fact that "he's the president of the United States." 'NO CONFLICTS OF INTEREST' Reuters found no suggestion that Trump or anyone related to his businesses exerted pressure on the exchanges. In response to a request for comment, a White House press official told Reuters the president's assets had been placed in a family trust: "There are no conflicts of interest because the president isn't managing the assets. Any insinuation that there is a conflict of interest is irresponsible." The official referred specific questions about the meme coin to the Trump Organization, which did not respond to Reuters. Coinbase said the $TRUMP token got no special exceptions and the exchange followed its normal process when listing the coin. Paul Grewal, Coinbase's chief legal officer, said many people had to work over the weekend to get the listing done quickly, but no steps were skipped. "Given the information that was shared publicly, we were confident that users could engage with the token positively and safely," Grewal told Reuters. Coinbase listed $TRUMP as an "experimental" token to indicate it comes with "certain risks, including price swings," according to the company's website. The vetting of coins often focuses on how well-known the issuer is, how likely they are to remain in the public eye and how much they engage with the online community to sustain interest in the coin, metrics that $TRUMP would score highly on, according to Santa Clara University finance professor Seoyoung Kim, who specializes in crypto analytics. She cautioned that focusing on vetting speed alone could provide an incomplete picture of investor protection. A more holistic analysis, Kim said, would also involve factors such as the average market cap at which a coin is listed, for how long it has sustained that level before its listing, and its daily trading volumes. With $TRUMP listed so soon after launch, there was little such data for exchanges to parse. $TRUMP's market cap has since fallen to around $1.9 billion, down sharply from its peak above $15 billion on January 19. But that still ranks it amongst the largest meme coins launched since 2022. Reuters ran its listing-speed analysis past five academics with crypto expertise, including Kim, who all said its methodology was sound. David Krause, Emeritus Professor of Finance at Marquette University, who has studied Trump's crypto ventures, said the quickness of the $TRUMP listing "suggests either a dramatic acceleration of due diligence or corners being cut." "Either scenario has significant implications for investor protection and market integrity," he said. YOU DON'T SAY NO TO THE PRESIDENT The president's rush of business ventures in a lightly-regulated sector that his government is responsible for overseeing has drawn criticism from Democrats, consumer advocacy groups and former financial enforcement officials. "You don't say no to hosting the president's new meme coin," said Corey Frayer, a former senior crypto advisor at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Frayer is now director of a non-profit advocacy group, the Consumer Federation of America. "The president controls who oversees your business and how they enforce the law." Under former President Joe Biden, the SEC maintained that most crypto tokens, including meme coins, should be regulated as securities, making exchanges cautious about listing them. That began to change, quickly, after Trump was elected last November. The Republican has styled himself as the "crypto president," pledging to overhaul regulation of the sector. Following Trump's election, Coinbase – the largest publicly traded crypto exchange in the United States – and several of its rivals began listing more meme coins. In Trump's second term, the SEC has paused or withdrawn high-profile enforcement actions against crypto operators, including a major investor in a Trump family crypto project, and issued a staff statement concluding that meme coins do not constitute securities. An SEC spokesperson declined to comment on the agency's crypto policy and Trump's coin. Trump's family has launched multiple crypto ventures, raking in hundreds of millions of dollars. The $TRUMP token quickly earned an estimated $320 million in fees, though it's not publicly known how that amount has been divided between a Trump-controlled entity and its partners. OVERLOOKED CONCERNS Exchanges have been major beneficiaries of Trump's embrace of the industry. $TRUMP has generated significant revenue for the 10 exchanges in Reuters' review: more than $172 million in trading fees, according to estimates based on standard fees compiled for the news agency by CoinDesk Data, a crypto industry data provider. Trade in the coin, meanwhile, has favored a small group of investors. At the top, 45 crypto wallets cleared about $1.2 billion in profits overall, while another 712,777 wallets have collectively lost $4.3 billion, according to trading data analyzed by crypto analysis firm Bubblemaps as of June 18. In the middle, more than half a million wallets made an average of $5,656 profit each. In listing $TRUMP, some exchanges proceeded despite a factor they'd previously labelled as a red flag: 80 per cent of the coin's supply was held by the Trump family and its partners. Such a high concentration of ownership can allow the team behind a coin to sell large amounts of it at once, collapsing the price for retail investors. The terms of the $TRUMP coin specified that its total supply would be gradually unlocked over three years after initial release. On January 16, the day before $TRUMP was released, the New York State Department of Financial Services issued an alert to consumers about the risks of meme coins. Such coins, the notice said, are carried by platforms not licensed by the state and the supply of the digital tokens is often controlled by a small number of people. That opens the door to "pump-and-dump schemes," the regulator noted, in which public hype by their issuers leads to a jump in price – with big, early investors exiting and smaller retail buyers left holding the losses that follow. The NYDFS declined to comment beyond the guidance. Coinbase, which is subject to New York regulations, blocked state residents from accessing the token, but allowed U.S. customers elsewhere to trade. To list $TRUMP in New York, the exchange would have faced a long list of risk assessment and governance requirements. Some other exchanges acknowledged they looked past concerns about the concentration in a bid to serve customer demand. MEXC's chief operating officer, Tracy Jin, told Reuters that, because of the concentration of tokens, $TRUMP did not meet its usual standards for a full listing on its main board, but the exchange pushed ahead anyway due to strong demand. In a follow-up written statement, an MEXC spokesperson said that a "faster-than-usual" listing was possible because the coin had clear market momentum and it met "our listing standards early." Commenting on the Reuters listing-speed analysis, the spokesperson said market conditions and demand for political meme tokens had changed since 2022, "making direct comparisons less relevant." Bitget also had concerns about the 80 per cent figure, CEO Chen told Reuters. "Eighty percent held by the team, even though there's a little bit of a lock-up period, is in my opinion very risky," said Chen. "Ultimately, user trading volume, demand … overrode the so-called risky factor here." Like some exchanges, Bitget, based in the Seychelles, does not have a business presence in the U.S. or serve clients who reside there, Chen said. "Globally," she added, "people are generally aware of the risks associated with trading meme coins." Upbit, which operates in South Korea, said it does not comment on specific coin listings but that it has "a rigorous and comprehensive evaluation process." Erald Ghoos, CEO for Europe of OKX, said the exchange's legal and compliance teams stayed up all night over different time zones to work on the listing. Seychelles-registered OKX says its diligence process requires "meticulous preparation." It decided to list $TRUMP within 26 hours.
Straits Times
26 minutes ago
- Straits Times
Veteran diplomats and tech pioneer given honorary degrees by NUS
Find out what's new on ST website and app. (From left) Honorary graduands Chan Heng Chee, Dr Noeleen Heyzer and Wong Ngit Liong, and NUS president Professor Tan Eng Chye (far right) during the graduation ceremony on July 14. SINGAPORE – Veteran diplomats Chan Heng Chee and Noeleen Heyzer, as well as tech pioneer Wong Ngit Liong, received honorary degrees from the National University of Singapore (NUS) on July 14. The honorary Doctor of Letters degrees were presented by Education Minister Desmond Lee at the commencement ceremony for 99 graduates from the NUS Business School, held by NUS at the University Cultural Centre. The honorary degrees are the university's highest form of recognition for outstanding individuals whose service has had an impact in Singapore and globally. Professor Chan Heng Chee is an NUS alumna who graduated with first class honours in Political Science in 1964 when it was then known as the University of Singapore, and returned to do her PhD in 1974. She was NUS' first female head of Political Science, before being appointed to lead the new Institute of Policy Studies in 1988. In 1996, at the start of her 16-year stay in Washington as Singapore's UN Representative and Ambassador to the United States, Prof Chan deepened ties, culminating in the US-Singapore Free Trade Agreement which was signed in 2003. In a citation, Professor Simon Chesterman, NUS' vice provost and dean of NUS College, said that through her career transitions, from academic to diplomat and then public intellectual, Prof Chan brought together a rare combination of intellectual independence and global experience. 'Throughout her career, Ambassador Chan has helped to shape how Singapore understands itself and how Singapore is understood by the world... at a time when expertise is not always valued quite as much as it is needed,' he said. While students of her time were focused on being 'present-ready' to grapple with political developments of the time such as Singapore's separation from Malaysia, Prof Chan said universities today have to prepare students to be 'future-ready'. With unpred icta bility and volatility being the new normal in 2025, she said students need to also develop an interest in politics and geopolitics. Addressing the graduands, she encouraged them to understand and follow what is happening in the world and locally, as it is crucial for their futures. 'Going forward, geopolitics is an inescapable part of our future, and we should be prepared to ride it, to deal with it,' said Prof Chan. Ambassador-at-Large Chan Heng Chee (left) being conferred the Honorary Doctor of Letters by Education Minister Desmond Lee on July 14. ST PHOTO: MARK CHEONG Fellow honorary degree recipient and NUS alu mn a Noeleen Heyzer was former Under-Secretary-General of the UN and the highest ranking Singaporean in the UN system from 2007 to 2014. A leadership pioneer for women, Dr Heyzer was the first woman from outside North America to head the UN's Development Fund for Women, and the first woman to serve as the executive secretary of the UN's Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific since its founding in 1947. Calling her a trusted voice in global governance, NUS' vice provost of student life and acting dean at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy Leong Ching said that Dr Heyzer is a trailblazer for women's empowerment across the world. 'Her leadership has redefined the nature of power itself – as a force for dignity, inclusion, and transformation,' said Prof Leong. Speaking at the ceremony, Dr Heyzer said that she is blessed to be born and raised in Singapore, where social mobility was provided for many, including her and her family. 'The transformative role of education and the thirst for learning played a big part in my evolving life,' she said. She called on graduates to provide new leadership in a world filled with paradox and disruptions, but also immense possibilities. Said Dr Heyzer: 'We are not just inheriting an emerging new world order. We are called to co-create it.' Dr Noeleen Heyzer being conferred the Honorary Doctor of Letters by Education Minister Desmond Lee on July 14. ST PHOTO: MARK CHEONG Mr Wong Ngit Liong, the final honorary degree recipient, is the executive chairman and founder of Venture Corporation. Since its inception in 1984, Mr Wong has led the company's evolution from a start-up in electronics manufacturing services into a globally recognised technology powerhouse. In public service, Mr Wong has been on numerous national boards and committees, including the Economic Development Board, 2002 Economic Review Committee and Singapore Exchange, among others. In a citation, Professor Aaron Thean, NUS' provost and deputy president of academic affairs, called Mr Wong a 'distinguished leader and pioneer in the global technology industry'. He added that as chairman of NUS' Board of Trustees from 2004 to 2016, Mr Wong's leadership was crucial in the university's structural transformation, including its propulsion into the ranks of the world's top universities. Recounting NUS's transformation since 2005, Mr Wong said he was part of a team that toured top universitie s in the US, Europe and China to learn and exchange ideas. Mr Wong Ngit Liong, executive chairman and founder of Venture Corporation, speaking after being conferred the Honorary Doctor of Letters by Education Minister Desmond Lee on July 14. ST PHOTO: MARK CHEONG Though foreign experts were invited to review local tertiary education strategy and curriculum, he said after some years, they were no longer needed. 'We adopted best practices, learned and leapfrogged to greater heights... We are so much more ahead of them, that they now have to learn from us,' said Mr Wong. A total of 17,646 students will receive bachelor's or graduate degrees this year from NUS at ceremonies taking place over 12 days from July 10 to July 21.
CNA
32 minutes ago
- CNA
World stocks slip as US tariff threats heat-up
LONDON/SYDNEY :World shares ticked lower on Monday, with European shares slipping as the latest salvo of threats in the U.S. tariff wars kept investors on edge, although there were some hopes this would prove to be mostly bluster by President Donald Trump. The pan-European STOXX 600 index was last down 0.3 per cent. Other regional indexes also declined, barring the UK's FTSE 100 .FTSE, which was up 0.4 per cent. MSCI's broadest index of world shares dipped 0.1 per cent. Trump on Saturday said he would impose a 30 per cent tariff on most imports from the European Union and Mexico from August 1, even as they are locked in long negotiations. The EU said it would extend a suspension of countermeasures to U.S. tariffs until early August and continue to press for a negotiated settlement, though Germany's finance minister called for firm action if the levies went ahead. German 10-year government bond yields briefly hit their highest since early April on Monday after settling back to 4.63 per cent. Yields move inversely to price. "To use the biggest cliché in the book, it continues to be a rollercoaster ride for all of us following the trade story, even if the market has increasingly overcome its queasiness and ensured it has been well stocked up on motion sickness tablets," said Deutsche Bank strategist Jim Reid in a note to clients. A rise in Japanese government bond yields also added to upward pressure on borrowing costs elsewhere, said Jens Peter Soerensen, chief analyst at Danske Bank. JGB yields surged as concerns grew that an upcoming election could pave the way for increased fiscal spending. Chinese blue chips closed 0.1 per cent higher as data showed annual export growth topped forecasts at 5.8 per cent in June, even as exports to the U.S. fell almost 10 per cent. Retail sales figures, industrial output and gross domestic product are due Tuesday. S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq futures both eased 0.4 per cent. Earnings season kicks off this week with the major banks leading the pack on Tuesday. S&P companies are expected to have increased profits by 5.8 per cent from the year-earlier period, down from an expectation of a 10.2 per cent gain on April 1, according to LSEG IBES. PRESSURING POWELL In bond markets, Treasuries got a very marginal safety bid and 10-year yields held at 4.41 per cent. Futures for the Federal Reserve funds rate edged higher as markets priced in a little more policy easing for next year. While Fed Chair Jerome Powell has signalled a patient outlook on cuts, Trump is piling up political pressure for more aggressive easing. White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett over the weekend warned Trump might have grounds to fire Powell because of renovation cost overruns at the Fed's Washington headquarters. Trump said on Sunday that it would be a great thing if Powell stepped down. U.S. consumer prices data for June are due on Tuesday and could finally start to show early upward pressure from tariffs, though retailers still have pre-levy inventory to draw on and some companies are absorbing the costs into margins. The impact on supply chain costs could show in producer price and import price figures this week, while a reading on retail sales will indicate how consumers are faring. Among currencies, the euro dipped 0.1 per cent to $1.1684, edging away from its recent four-year top of $1.1830. The dollar lost 0.1 per cent on the yen to 147.29 while the dollar index was little changed at around 97.89. The dollar rose 0.25 per cent against the Mexican peso to around 18.67, with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum confident a trade deal could be reached before the August deadline. Bitcoin crossed the $120,000 level for the first time to reach a top around $123,153. In commodity markets, gold picked up a modest safe-haven bid and rose 0.1 per cent to $3,359 an ounce. Oil prices rose over 1 per cent on speculation Trump could announce stiffer sanctions on Russia later on Monday, including levies on major customers buying Russian oil. Any move from Trump wishing to arm Ukrainians more vigorously will find enthusiastic support in Congress, said Christopher Smart, founder and a managing partner of consultancy firm, Arbroath Group. "In a famously divided legislature, there is overwhelming bipartisan support for a bill that will deliver its own sharp escalation to the conflict," said a research note by Smart sent Monday. The legislation threatens 500 per cent tariffs on countries that buy Russian oil, gas, uranium or other exports, said the letter. Brent jumped 67 cents to $71.03 a barrel, while U.S. crude added 70 cents to $69.15 per barrel.
