SINGAPORE - Singapore's trade-sensitive economy has declined for a second straight quarter, the government said Friday, meaning the city-state has entered a recession for the first time in six years.

On a seasonally adjusted quarter-on-quarter annualised basis, real GDP declined by 6.3 percent in the third quarter after contracting 5.7 percent in the previous quarter, estimates from the Ministry of Trade and Industry said.

It did not describe the economy as being in recession, but a technical recession is generally defined as two consecutive quarters of quarter-on-quarter contractions in economic output.

Economists polled by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast a 0.3 percent quarter-on-quarter rise in gross domestic product (GDP), the value of goods and services produced in the economy.

Singapore's last technical recession occurred in 2002, and the most recent full-scale recession was in 2001 when the economy contracted 2.4 percent during the year.