Canadian manufacturing sales increased 0.5 per cent to $688.5 billion in 2019, marking the fourth consecutive year of growth.
However the pace has been much slower than in 2018 (+5.4 per cent) and in 2017 (+6.0 per cent), said Statistics Canada in a report released on Tuesday.
“During the first half of 2019, manufacturing sales exhibited a positive trend, supported by higher sales for petroleum and coal products and growth in the transportation equipment industry. These gains subsided during the latter half of the year, and declines in other industries, primarily wood product manufacturing, also limited sales over the course of 2019,” said the federal agency.
“Monthly total inventories increased steadily from January to May of 2019, continuing the trend from the previous year. Inventories then remained stable during the second half of the year, resulting in a year-end seasonally adjusted increase of 3.5 per cent compared with 2018. After increasing significantly over the course of 2018, the monthly value of unfilled orders remained relatively stable throughout 2019, settling at $97.6 billion at the end of the year.”
StatsCan said petroleum and coal product manufacturing sales increased 0.4 pe cent in 2019 compared with 2018 with gains primarily driven by Western refineries.
“Industry sales rose in March and April, in the wake of price gains due to world supply constraints and global demand concerns. Monthly sales then hovered around the same level for the remainder of the year. In constant dollar terms, sales increased by 5.5% in 2019. Petroleum and coal manufacturing sales were affected by an industry average monthly price decline of 5.2 per cent in 2019,” it said.
In December, Canadian manufacturing sales of $56.4 billion were down 0.7 per cent from November but up 0.1 per cent from December 2018. Alberta manufacturing sales of $6 billion rose by 0.1 per cent on a month-over-month basis but fell by 0.2 per cent year-over-year.
Mario Toneguzzi is a business reporter in Calgary.
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