Singapore's manufacturing output in July grew by 1.9 percent year on year, down from the growth of 8 percent for June, the Economic Development Board said on Friday.

The performance was worse than market expectations.

The biomedical manufacturing cluster provided mild support with a growth of 13.4 percent in output, though it is much lower than the expansion of 54.7 percent in June. Excluding the biomedical manufacturing, the output fell by 0.4 percent in July.

The transport engineering cluster continued to expand, and the precision engineering output rebounded, but overall output was pulled down by the chemicals and electronics clusters.

The electronics cluster remained weak, with output declining 5. 8 percent in July, and the chemicals cluster also fell 2.5 percent year on year.

On a seasonally adjusted month-on-month basis, the manufacturing output fell by 9.1 percent in July. Excluding biomedical manufacturing, output fell 4.2 percent month on month.