Singapore’s merchandise trade expanded in January, according to the latest release by Enterprise Singapore.
On a year-on-year (YoY) basis, total merchandise trade growth nearly doubled to 23.8% in January, with expansion in both exports (30.4%) and imports (16.6%).
Merchandise exports expanded in January YoY, fueled by increases in Non-oil Domestic Exports (NODX) and Non-oil Re-exports (NORX) while oil exports continued their contraction.
NODX increased by 9.3%, higher than the 6.1% YoY in December 2025, led by a surge in electronics exports (56.1%) from “strong AI-related demand.”
Non-electronics exports turned negative, declining by 3%, from growth of 0.8% YoY in December last year.
The top three NODX exports growth were ICs, disk media products and non-monetary gold, which increased by 80.5% (+$1.3 billion), 70.2% (+$0.3 billion) and 14.9% (+$0.3 billion) respectively.
The expansion in non-monetary gold exports was attributed to “high gold prices and demand for safe-haven assets amid economic uncertainty.”
The decline in non-electronic exports were driven mainly by specialised machinery (-$0.4 billion), food preparations (-$0.4 billion) and petrochemicals (-$0.3 billion).
The top markets for NODX came from China (37.1% or +$0.6 billion), Hong Kong (34% or +$0.5 billion) and the European Union 27 (43.7% or +$0.4 billion).
For the top 10 export markets, the U.S. saw the most severe decline in NODX at 45.3%, followed by Indonesia at -16.9%.
NORX surged by 51.4% YoY in January, extending the 15% YoY expansion in December last year.
The expansion was primarily driven by electronics (69.4%) while growth in non-electronics turned positive at 24.2%, from negative growth of 4.5% YoY in December 2025.
For non-electronic NORX, non-monetary gold saw the highest growth of 161.9%.
Some of the top export market growth for NORX were Taiwan (163.7%), Thailand (270.8%) and the U.S. (60.1%).
Oil exports in 2025 continued to decline by 11.1% YoY in January, extending the contraction of 10.1% YoY In December last year.
