Economies: Singapore issues stream of good news.

Singapore has announced that it is relaxing its border precautions against the A(H1N1) virus. Yet Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and India are all reporting increased numbers of cases, as are Australia, New Zealand and the UK. All are countries where international travel uses Singapore as a hub or stop-over. The situation in Thailand is so severe that the government yesterday considered emergency powers to combat rising numbers of fatal cases of the virus. Yet Singapore is confident that its biggest risk is now intra-community transfer and that is on the wane. Neighbouring Malaysia said yesterday that intra-community transfer has now overtaken imported cases.

The economy has produced a good news surprise, too: Q2 2009 produced a leap in GDP. It is being widely quoted on an "annualised" basis that exceeds 20%. But the picture is mixed: services fell. Manufacturing generally did not perform well - but pharmaceuticals were exceptionally strong - and widely considered to be unrepresentative of the economy as a whole. Financial services has provided some support for services but even there there is no significant growth after the retraction of the past year.

Certainly, retailers are struggling: offers in Singapore's Orchard Road now make shopping in Singapore significantly cheaper than in Kuala Lumpur where residents say a typical trolley load of shopping has gone up by around 20% in the past six months - and goods, especially branded goods, are often anywhere from 30-100% more expensive in Kuala Lumpur where recessionary pressures have not been felt as strongly as in other local economies.

Singapore is now more reliant on SMEs than previously - they make up 99% of the companies in Singapore. Until 2007, they contributed just under half of the country's GDP.

Behind the news is a continued need for feel-good stories.

Also within the past few days, the topping out of casino-related developments has been announced. Just six months ago, there were rumours that one of the landmark projects may have to be rescued by the Singapore government. Singapore has hitched its wagon to tourism, having priced itself out of the McJobs sector that sustains much of south-east Asia.

The Singapore Tourist Board has invested heavily in promoting stop-overs in Singapore - a market that is totally dependent on travellers feeling comfortable with getting off the plane and restarting their journey. Whilst retailers play their part in making attractive offers, the chance of catching a nasty bug militates against that. And visitor numbers are down: in May 2009 they were down 13% as against May 2008. That was at the time property "experts" were publishing articles saying to expect rapid rises in the price of Singapore property.

And it is heavily promoting the Formula One GP to be held in September - although hotels in the city centre have regarded the inaugural race last year as a commercial failure - or at least a failure to meet their expectations. But their expectations were based on greed: literally the day that the race was confirmed, Singapore hotels boosted their prices to that weekend in some cases to three times their normal prices. Several have now admitted that that was a mistake and will be charging either standard rates or a small uplift for this year's event.

Singapore knows that it will fail to meet its target of just under 11 million visitors: last year it got 10 million. It is cutting its forecast for this year to nine million. That may be achievable - three and three quarters million visited from January to April.

But with the summer season just starting, there's no doubt that some good news will help.