Recent data from Statistics Canada shows an unexpected drop in Canada’s April retail sales with a decline of 0.1 per cent after two months of gains.
This drop follows a forecasted 0.7 per cent increase from March, which had Stats Canada revising March’s month-on-month gain from a 0.7 per cent increase to one of 0.9 per cent.
Overall, sales fell in four of the 11 subsectors in April, accounting for 43 per cent of retail trade. In volume terms, this means that retail sales dropped by 0.2 per cent.
“[This is] clearly a negative for April’s GDP outlook, which now looks more likely to come in no better than a 0.1 per cent gain,” says CIBC economist Nick Exarhos, noting that this decline is also bad news for the loonie. CJ
