OTTAWA, Jan 6 (Reuters) – Canada posted a commerce surplus of C$3.13 billion ($2.45 billion) in November, the biggest in over 13 years, with document exports offsetting the impression of floods in British Columbia, Statistics Canada mentioned on Thursday.
Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast a November surplus of C$2.03 billion. Exports and imports hit all-time highs for the second month in a row, pushing the excess to a stage not seen because the C$3.45 billion posted in September 2008.
Peter Corridor, chief economist at Canada’s export improvement company, mentioned the information confirmed how a lot international manufacturing had recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The financial system has come roaring again rather more rapidly and rather more decidedly than anyone anticipated or was ready for,” he mentioned by telephone, noting that vitality exports had posted a 2.8% achieve. Canada is a serious exporter of crude and pure gasoline.
General exports rose by 3.8% from October, serving to outweigh the impression of large floods and landslides in British Columbia final November that briefly minimize most hyperlinks to Vancouver, the nation’s largest port.
“This implies there are modest upside dangers to the preliminary estimate that GDP rose by 0.3% month on month in November,” Stephen Brown, senior Canada economist at Capital Economics, mentioned in a be aware.
Statscan mentioned the information had been inflated by unusually excessive pharmaceutical shipments. In November, Canada imported COVID-19 medicine for packaging and labeling after which exported it.
However even when prescribed drugs had been stripped out, general exports nonetheless grew by 2.8% from October. Imports grew by 2.4% however that shrank to 0.1% excluding prescribed drugs.
The Canadian greenback was buying and selling 0.1% decrease at 1.2762 to the dollar, or 78.36 U.S. cents, as buyers weighed the opportunity of faster-than-expected U.S. rate of interest hikes.
($1 = 1.2762 Canadian {dollars})
Extra reporting by Steve Scherer and Dale Smith in Ottawa and Fergal Smith in Toronto;
Modifying by Toby Chopra and Nick Zieminski
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