Singapore's corporate sector feared to be slowly deteriorating

It has worsened since July last year.

According to Standard Chartered, a notable deterioration in Singapore's corporate sector has been since since July 2013.

"Our measure of the average debt-to-equity ratio has risen to 58% from 55%, while the corporate-sector DSR has increased >14ppt to 76%," it said in a report.

Here's more from Standard Chartered:

Debt to EBIT has risen above that of South Korea to match China's 6.9 times. One factor that mitigates this is that these metrics are entirely from the listed corporates' universe.

Also, we present the average for the sector rather than the median, which has seen a drop in the DSR since the last update.

The average has moved substantially, driven mainly by some large corporates, while the majority of the corporates in Singapore have not boosted their debt overall.

Finally, the aggregate figure is still only in 'yellow' territory.

We are therefore not as concerned about Singapore's debt dynamics as we are about China,s for example.

The pick-up seen in Singapore's large listed corporates may be associated with investment-related borrowings, where investors took advantage of low borrowing costs in 2013 in anticipation of a rise in US interest rates.

We will be monitoring this area closely for risks associated with increasing borrowing costs, as this sector, along with the household sector, looks stretched on a number of leverage metrics.