The Singapore economy is facing the worst recession in its 55-year history and is unlikely to attain full recovery soon, even as the country goes to the polls on Friday, said the research firm Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

The country, widely expected to re-elect its incumbent party – the People's Action Party (PAP) – into government, is also expected to shift its economic recovery measures from big stimulus to smaller targeted measures, EIU country analyst Yu Liuqing told CGTN.

"The Singaporean economy is not going to get out of the dungeon by any kind of stimulus measures," he said.

Yu said the government would likely continue to implement more targeted small measures to boost jobs and also cushion the losses of more affected sectors such as aviation, tourism and retail.

Yu noted that the government has already rolled out four big stimuli to the tune of close to 100 billion Singapore dollars (71.8 billion U.S. dollars), equating to close to 20 percent of GDP, among the biggest in terms of GDP share in Asia.

"I don't see big ticket stimulus measures coming in. Especially if it is for them to weather the downturn, it is not possible," said Yu.

Yu added that another point to consider was that a newly elected government would have less incentives to spend big amounts with the elections over. "Also the election has passed. So there's no incentives for the incumbent to really use more big stimulus measures," he said.

However, Yu added that the advantage that Singapore's economy has is that it had "ample cash reserves" to draw from, and implementing additional stimulus measures will not be a burden to the fiscal position.

A need to diversify the economy

Singapore has been among the worst-hit by the coronavirus outbreak in Southeast Asia, going by the number of confirmed cases of over 45,000. But, the number of fatalities has been relatively low. The Singaporean government forecasts the economy to shrink between 4 percent and 7 percent this year.

However, Yu said that Singapore's economy, which is dominated by trade, investment and financial services due to its prime trading route and friendly business environment, had "incredibly good" performance in these sectors in 2020.

"The non-oil domestic export, basically produced in Singapore, has actually been growing in March and April, despite the rest of Asia seeing a decline in export," he said, adding that exports were mostly boosted by the local manufacturing of pharmaceuticals.

Yu said another bright spot for the economy was its innovation scene.

"Singapore is quite vibrant. It houses Grab, Shoppe and Lazada, the southeast Asia internet giants, it is regional headquarters of Google and Facebook," he said.

Moving forward, Yu said that risks in the long run include the de-globalization trend, which Singapore would need to secure against by transforming the economy.

"We expect the government to really facilitate the process even more by doing more advanced manufacturing, pharmaceutical, biotech, software and industries like this to diversify the portfolio," he said.