Inflation? Not here

Singapore's consumer price index rose 0.4 percent in April on a seasonally-adjusted basis. That looks large, until you notice that it also rose 0.4 percent from a year ago.

The news on Singapore's inflation rate seems consistent with the news that Singapore's yield curve is the flattest since 1998 at the height of the Asian financial crisis, with the yield on 10-year Singapore Government Securities at only 2.74 percent.

Hong Kong's inflation is also tame. Its consumer price index rose just 0.5 percent in April from a year earlier, slower than the 0.8 percent rise in the previous month.

In other Hong Kong news, the volume of its domestic exports fell 19.2 percent in March over the same month last year. Prices rose by 5 percent. The volume of goods imports fell 1.1 percent while prices rose 3.9 percent. On the whole, it doesn't look very encouraging for Hong Kong.

But the interesting thing to me is that when the two city-states that are among the most exposed to international economic forces see hardly any inflation despite the rise in oil prices, does that tell you something about global economic conditions?