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This report discussed food and agricultural export product certificates currently required by the Singapore Government.

Most raw materials for food processing are imported into Singapore due to its limited land, natural resources, livestock, and agricultural production. Singapore imported $1.2 billion of U.S. processed food products in 2022, which was a 9% increase compared with 2021.

Saudi Arabia is the largest economy in the Arab world and home to a growing food manufacturing and processing sector. Total investments in the sector are projected to reach $70 billion in 2030, an increase of approximately 59% over total investments in 2016.

Recent available data indicates that Saudi Arabia imported approximately 2.7 million metric tons (MMT) of barley in the first six months of MY 2022/23 (July – December 2022), an increase of approximately 11% compared to the same period last year (2.46 MMT).

Singapore’s economy is rebounding strongly from the COVID-19 pandemic. The city-state’s highly import dependent, multi-billion dollar food industry is driven by robust consumer spending, high disposable incomes, and intense urbanization.

Singapore does not have any domestic commercial production of plant biotechnology. The Singapore Food Agency provides a link in its website that lists a total of 64 genetically engineered (GE) crops that have been approved for use as food for direct consumption, ingredients, and further processing into ingredients for other food in the country.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s (KSA) regulations allow the importation of biotech plant products, but they are required to be labeled if they contain more than one percent genetically engineered (GE) plant ingredients. As a result, many retail packed food importers do not import biotech foods due to concerns that biotech labeling could jeopardize their product image. However, Saudi Arabia imports large quantities of biotech U.S. corn, soybeans, and their products.

Saudi Arabia’s barley imports for the first six months of MY 2022/23 (July – Dec. 2022) are estimated at 2.6 million metric tons (MMT), an increase of six percent compared to the same period last year. Post’s current projection for total barley imports for MY 2022/23 is 4.5 MMT, which is a decrease of four percent compared to the USDA official estimate of 4.7 MMT. Unless the price of barley drastically decreases, Post anticipates demand will remain low throughout MY 2022/23.

Saudi Arabia was a 24th largest market ($1.34 million) for U.S. food and agricultural products last year. A return to pre-Covid living and working conditions are invigorating U.S. agricultural exports to the Kingdom in 2022. U.S. Customs data for January – August 2022 shows an 11 percent increase in U.S. agricultural exports to Saudi Arabia compared to the same period in 2021.

Singapore has a highly developed and competitive hotel, restaurant and institutional (HRI) sector with sales in 2021 totaling $7.7 billion USD. The HRI sector suffered badly during the pandemic. The industry lost over $19 billion USD from tourism sales in 2021 alone.

This report discusses food and agricultural export product certificates currently required by the Singapore Government.

This report provides information on the regulations and procedures for the importation of food and agricultural products from the United States to Singapore. Updates in this report include modifications to the Singapore Food Regulations (guidelines governing imported food).