OREANDA-NEWS. China was Singapore's top trading partner by value in 2015, making up 12.3% of the total value of all Singapore's imports and exports. Last year the total value of exports and imports moved around the world declined by 11%. This saw Singapore's global trade value decline by 12%. Amidst the trade contractions, China made up a greater share of Singapore's global trade in 2015 than in 2014. In 2014 China made up 0.5% less or 11.8% of Singapore's total trade value.  

Singapore also lists a number of companies and trusts with their principal place of business in China, in addition to Singapore based companies and trusts that generate revenue in China or base assets in China. Approximately 300 stocks listed on Singapore Exchange (SGX) reported somewhere between 2% and 100% of their last financial year revenues to China. 

There are also existing indices that provide a performance measure of Singapore's largest capitalised China-related stocks. The FTSE ST China Top Index is made up of the 20 largest stocks of the FTSE ST All-Share Index that have reported either at least 50% of their revenues from Mainland China, or reported at least 50% of their operating assets located in Mainland China.

FTSE ST China Top Index Recent Performance

Over the past three months, the FTSE ST China Top Index has generated a total return of 11.7% which has trimmed its year to date decline to 4.1%. 

At the same time, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange Hang Seng China Enterprises Index (HSCEI) has gained 9.7% over the past three months, which has trimmed its year to date decline to 15.2%. Note both those performances are in Singapore Dollar terms. The Singapore Dollar has appreciated by 3.8% to the Hong  Kong Dollar in the year thus far.  The relative price performance of these indices are tabled below.

The ten biggest constituent weights of the FTSE ST China Top Index make up just over 80% of the total Index weights. The ten stocks have averaged a 1.7% decline in year to date total return, with nine of the 10 stocks averaging a 4.5% indicative dividend yield. The table below details the 10 largest constituents of the FTSE ST China Top index and their recent performances. 

Source: SGX, SGX StockFacts, FTSE Russell, Bloomberg (data as of 10 May 2016)

On a Sector basis, the FTSE ST China Top Index has just over two fifths of the weightings representing the Real Estate Sector. The largest weightings of the Real Estate Sector in the Index are Hongkong Land Holdings, Global Logistic Properties, Yanlord Land Group, CapitaLand Retail China Trust and Perennial Real Estate Holdings.  Together these five stocks averaged a 2.5% decline in total return in the year to date.
 
In the year thus far, the best performing sector of the FTSE ST China Top Index has been the Consumer Staples segment. This segment is made up of two food producers - Wilmar International and Sino Grandness Food Industry Group. The two stocks have generated total returns of 17.8% and 71.2% respectively. The least performing sectors of the Index in the year thus far have been Energy, with Falcon Energy Group declining 18.6%, followed by Information Technology, with Hi-P International declining 17.6%.