Singapore  - Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said the city state's economic growth projections for this year would be revised to reflect the economic downturn as the economies of major trading partners have taken a turn for the worse, news reports said on Saturday.

"Growth numbers have come down all over Asia. The trade numbers have come down very drastically all over Asia," the Channel News Asia quoted Lee as saying.

"All our major trading partners are seeing this tremendous downturn," Lee told reporters on Friday after getting feedback on the state of trade from local businessmen.

Lee cited the steep fall in Singapore's December non-oil exports, which fell by 21 per cent, following a 17-per-cent drop recorded in November 2008.

The official economic growth forecast would likely be revised next week, ahead of the 2009 budget announcement on Thursday, and just weeks after it was downgraded to between negative 2 per cent and 1 per cent. The government had projected growth of negative 1 per cent to 2 per cent growth in November.

Based on December export data, Singapore economists were projecting 2009 economic growth at negative 3 per cent while others were making a wider forecast of negative 2 per cent and negative 5 per cent for the island, the news reports said.

Singapore is not facing the problem alone. "Asia is in the midst of the biggest export collapse it has experienced in decades," the Straits Times quoted HSBC economist Robert Prior-Wandesforde as saying. (dpa)