Canada’s wholesale trade leaps on farm salesCanada’s wholesale trade leaps on farm salesOTTAWA — Canadian wholesale trade leaped 1.9% in May on a sharp rise in demand for agricultural supplies following bad weather which had hit sales in April, Statistics Canada said on Wednesday.
The increase — which dwarfed traders’ predictions of a 0.1% rise — was the biggest month-on-month jump since the 3.1% recorded in November 2009. Five of the seven subsectors advanced in May, accounting for more than two thirds of wholesale sales.
“Sales in the agricultural supplies industry bounced back from weather related declines in April,” Statscan said in a commentary. The industry recorded a 27.8% advance compared to April.
Sales in the farm, lawn and garden machinery and equipment industries — also hit by wet weather in April — were up by 26.1%.
Excluding the auto sector, sales were up by 2.6% in May, and in volume terms they rose by 1.6%.
Wholesale inventories, which have been growing since the start of 2010, rose 0.1% in May. The inventory to sales ratio, a measure of the number of months it would take to exhaust inventories at the current sales pace, fell for the first time in five months to 1.17 in May from 1.20 in April.