Singapore just posted the kind of export numbers that make trade economists do a double-take. Non-oil domestic exports (NODX) surged 38.4% year-on-year in May 2026, but the real headline is hiding in the electronics breakdown: a 94.8% jump in electronics shipments fueled by the global scramble to build AI infrastructure.
To put that in perspective, integrated circuits alone climbed 80.9%. Disk media products shot up 227.8%. And PCs rose 140.9%.
The acceleration is accelerating
May’s performance didn’t come out of nowhere. April 2026 NODX grew approximately 24.5% year-on-year, with electronics shipments up 66.7% during that month. The first quarter of 2026 already showed electronics shipments rising 57.8%, helping push Singapore’s GDP growth to 6% year-on-year for Q1.
The primary destinations paint a revealing picture. Shipments surged to Taiwan, South Korea, and the United States, the three countries that sit at the center of the global semiconductor and AI hardware ecosystem. Taiwan houses TSMC. South Korea is home to Samsung and SK Hynix. The US is where OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Meta are spending tens of billions building hyperscale data centers.
