SG Morning Highlights | Singapore business confidence hits one-year low for Q1 2023: SCCB

Advancers / Decliners is 69 to 25, with 26.96 million securities worth S$57.02 million changing hands.

A key gauge of US consumer prices in November posted the smallest monthly advance in more than a year, indicating the worst of inflation has likely passed and validating an anticipated slowing in the pace of Federal Reserve interest-rate hikes.

Excluding food and energy, the consumer price index rose 0.2 per cent in November and was up 6 per cent from a year earlier, according to a Labor Department report on Tuesday (Dec 13). Economists see the gauge – known as the core CPI – as a better indicator of underlying inflation than the headline measure.

The overall CPI increased 0.1 per cent from the prior month and was up 7.1 per cent from a year earlier, as lower energy prices helped offset rising food costs.

Wall Street stocks jumped on Tuesday as consumer inflation data came in better than expected, as markets shifted focus to the US central bank’s upcoming policy decision.

Meanwhile, the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index bounced 1.0 per cent as well to 11,256.81.

Goldbell Group hopes to supplement its workforce with more foreign labour, under the newly-launched Manpower for Strategic Economic Priorities (M-SEP) scheme. The vehicle and equipment leasing company aims to do this even while boosting productivity to make up for scarce manpower.

First announced in March, the scheme opened for applications at 4 pm on Tuesday (Dec 13), on the website of the Ministry of Manpower (MOM). It provides higher foreign worker quotas for "needle-movers" that contribute to Singapore's economic priorities through ambitious investment, innovation, or internationalisation activities.

Productivity improvements such as upskilling and automation are still the main solution to labour shortages, especially for blue-collar workers – but this takes time, said Goldbell Group chief executive officer Arthur Chua.

Local business sentiment has moderated for the fourth straight quarter, hitting a one-year low for the first quarter of 2023, amid a mixed outlook across various sectors.

Data from the Singapore Commercial Credit Bureau (SCCB) released on Tuesday (Dec 13) showed its quarterly Business Optimism Index falling to +4.73 percentage points for Q1 2023 from +4.98 percentage points the previous quarter and +5.91 percentage points in Q1 2022.

Similar to the fourth quarter, five out of six indicators remained expansionary. These indicators are volume of sales, net profit, selling prices, new orders, inventory levels and employment.

Singapore's international visitor arrivals slipped in November to 816,254, slightly down from October's 816,758 and breaking a nine-month growth streak, going by latest figures from Singapore Tourism Board (STB) on Tuesday (Dec 13).

November's tourist arrival numbers remain below the 1.5 million visitors recorded in November 2019, before the pandemic.

But analysts agree that the slight fall was expected and reflective of historical trends.

The company's revenue rose 2 per cent to S$95.5 million for the period, largely due to contributions from international freight forwarding. Its cost of sales fell 7.1 per cent to S$65.1 million.

As freight costs dropped from their peak, Vibrant's gross profit margin improved by 6.7 percentage points to 31.9 per cent, from 25.2 per cent in the year-ago period.