Singapore's STI opens higher on positive GDP, NODX reports

SINGAPORE share prices opened higher on Tuesday with the Straits Times Index up 2.65 points to 3,463.50 at 9am.

This follows the Tokyo bourse where stocks opened slightly higher on Tuesday after a seven-day winning streak took it to a fresh 15-year high. The recent gains came on the back of a weak yen and expectations over Japanese corporate earnings. Wall Street and many markets in Europe were closed on Monday for public holidays.

In Singapore, the government on Tuesday announced that the economy grew a better-than-expected 2.6 per cent year on year in Q1 2015, beating both the initial flash estimate of 2.1 per cent growth, and the market's expectation of 2.2 per cent.

Singapore's non-oil domestic exports (NODX) also had their best quarterly showing in three years with a 4.8 per cent year-on-year growth in the first three months of 2015, compared with the 0.5 per cent rise in the final quarter of 2014, thanks to higher shipments of both electronic and non-electronic NODX.