PRIME Minister Lee Hsien Loong said on Tuesday the Singapore economy has bottomed out and he does not expect another downturn.

'My sense is that we are out of the trough,' he told a news conference ahead of the summit of 21 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) economies next weekend.

He said the preliminary 0.8 per cent year-on-year economic growth in the third quarter this year was 'nothing to be proud of, but something to be grateful for'.

Singapore's economy continued to grow robustly in the third quarter as the base of the recovery grew beyond pharmaceuticals into the wider manufacturing and services industries.

GDP rose at a seasonally adjusted annualised rate of 14.9 per cent in the third quarter.

The government lifted its forecast for 2009 GDP to a fall of 2.5 per cent to 2 per cent, from a forecast of a drop of 6 per cent to 4 per cent. -- REUTERS