Singapore bouncing back

Just got back from a few days meetings in Singapore which finally seems to be coming out of a long funk about losing out to China. Interesting, then to see this report in the FT about the economy re-bounding: Singapore's economy rebounds in second quarter:

Singapore's economy grew at a seasonally adjusted annualised rate of 12.3 percent in the second quarter, boosted by a strong performance in the services sector and a pick-up in manufacturing.

The rise in gross domestic product (GDP) -- the total value of all goods and services in the economy -- was double the forecast of 6.6 percent growth in a Reuters poll.
Analysts said the economy had likely bottomed out during the June quarter and were looking for stronger growth in the second half of the year, driven mainly by manufacturing and a solid improvement in services.

"These were a fairly strong set of figures, thanks mostly to the services sector," said Joseph Tan, economist with Standard Chartered."

Like Hong Kong, all the media companies we visited last week were running flat out to keep up with demand all over Asia. The clear message, "if you can't make money now, you never will".