Canada’s economy contracted 0.1% in January as oil production and home sales took a hit at the start of the year, according to data released Thursday (March) 29 by Statistics Canada.
Mining and oil & gas fell 2.7% compared with a month before. The drop was most pronounced in the oil sands, where production fell 7.1% amid unscheduled maintenance shutdowns.
The real estate sector also felt the pinch as the output of real estate agents and brokers fell 12.8%.
“The January drop in [gross domestic product] is only the second monthly setback for the Canadian economy in the past 15 months, but appears to be very sector specific and not a sign of broader trouble,” BMO Capital Markets chief economist Douglas Porter wrote in a note to investors.
“Still, the underlying story is that growth remains on a sluggish underlying path of less than 2%, as it has been since the fever broke around the middle of last year.”
The one silver lining to the disappointing economic news was that December’s GDP numbers were revised upwards by the statistics agency, from 0.1% growth to 0.2%.
