Retailers across British Columbia had a happy holiday in December, experiencing the country’s highest year-over-year growth.
Sales in the province were 6% higher in December than they were last year, according to Statistics Canada data released February 20. Retailers reported a total of $5.6 billion in sales for the month, up from $5.3 billion in December last year. This was the biggest increase in the country, followed by Ontario with 5.1%. B.C.
Compared with November, however, sales in B.C. dipped 2.2%, cancelling out growth of 2.1% the previous month.
Canada-wide, sales fell 2% compared with November, falling far short of analysts’ expectation. Almost every category saw declines, particularly electronics and appliances, which fell 9.2%, and clothing, down 5.6%. Food and health and personal care were the only categories to see growth (up 1% and 0.2%, respectively).
“The decline in real sales means that the robust outlook for December GDP now looks a bit softer, and puts the Bank of Canada’s 2.5% outlook for Q4 slightly further out of reach,” CIBC World Markets economist Nick Exarhos.
Benjamin Reitzes, senior economist and vice-president, economic research at BMO Capital Markets, pointed out that this data should be taken with a grain of salt as it is possible that StatsCan may have had trouble seasonally adjusting sales when taking holiday markdowns into account.
“Before getting too downbeat on Canada, it’s clear that the weakness in this report is at least partially due to trouble seasonally adjusting the impact of Black Friday,” Reitzes said. “Shoppers are spreading their holiday shopping over a longer period, with Black Friday boosting November and dragging on December.
“There was similar broad-based weakness in retail sales in December 2012 and 2013.”
The Canadian dollar took a hit on the announcement of these retail figures. The dollar fell almost nine-tenths of a cents to 79.60 cents US. As of press time, the dollar had rebounded slightly to 79.93 cents US.
