Canada Manufacturing sales 0.7% versus 0.7% expected

• Prior month 0.2%

• Canadian manufacturing sales rose by 0.7% to $71.6 billion in February. The estimate was 0.7%
• Increases were seen in 13 out of 21 subsectors, largely fueled by:
  • Petroleum and coal products, which went up by 4.3%.
  • Electrical equipment, appliance, and component products, which saw a 12.6% increase.
• The chemical subsector experienced the most significant decline, with sales dropping by 5.5%.
• Sales in constant dollars showed a marginal increase of 0.1%.
• The Industrial Product Price Index also increased by 0.7%.

Inventory data:

• Total inventories in Canada decreased by 0.7% to $120.6 billion in February, marking the third consecutive monthly decline.
• The decrease was primarily due to lower goods in process inventories (-1.8%) and raw materials inventories (-0.5%).
• Significant reductions in inventories were noted in the chemicals (-5.5%) and petroleum and coal products (-2.7%) sectors.
• In constant dollars, total inventories saw a decline of 0.8%.
• The inventory-to-sales ratio decreased from 1.71 in January to 1.68 in February, indicating a quicker turnover of inventory relative to sales.

Additional related developments:

• Unfilled orders in the manufacturing sector increased by 0.8% to $105.1 billion, with aerospace products and parts orders up by 1.2%.
• The capacity utilization rate for the manufacturing sector rose 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 (+1.8 percentage points) subsectors.
• These gains were partly offset by decreases in the primary metal (-1.0 percentage points) and paper product (-1.9 percentage points) subsectors

This article was written by Greg Michalowski at www.forexlive.com.