- Previous month 0.2%
- Sales by Canadian manufacturers increased 0.7% to $71.6 billion in February. The estimate was 0.7%
- Increases were seen in 13 of 21 subsectors, largely driven by:
- Petroleum and coal products, up 4.3%.
- Electrical equipment, household appliances and components, which saw an increase of 12.6%.
- The chemical subsector saw the largest decline, with sales down 5.5%.
- Sales in constant dollars showed a slight increase of 0.1%.
- The Industrial Product Price Index also increased by 0.7%.
Inventory data:
- Total inventories in Canada fell 0.7% to $120.6 billion in February, marking the third consecutive monthly decline.
- The decrease is mainly attributable to the decrease in inventories of goods under processing (-1.8%) and inventories of raw materials (-0.5%).
- Significant inventory reductions were seen in the chemicals (-5.5%) and petroleum and coal products (-2.7%) sectors.
- In constant dollars, total inventories fell 0.8%.
- The inventory-to-sales ratio decreased from 1.71 in January to 1.68 in February, indicating a faster turnover of inventory relative to sales.
Additional related developments:
- Unfilled orders in the manufacturing sector increased 0.8% to $105.1 billion, with orders for aerospace products and parts increasing 1.2%.
- The manufacturing sector’s capacity utilization rate increased from 77.0% in January to 78.1% in February.
- There were increases in capacity utilization in the machinery (+2.3 percentage points), transportation equipment (+1.5 percentage points) and food (+1.0 percentage points) subsectors. 8 percentage points).
- These gains were partly offset by declines in the primary metals (-1.0 percentage points) and paper products (-1.9 percentage points) subsectors.
This article was written by Greg Michalowski at www.forexlive.com.
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