Canada March 2020 manufacturing sales data:
- Largest one-month decline since Dec 2008
- Prior was +0.5%
- Ex autos -5.5% vs -0.9% prior
- New orders -11.3% vs +3.0% prior
- Sales -4.4% in Q1 (third consecutive quarterly decline)
This is a humbling number for the Canadian economy. March only included a portion of the shutdown and April will be much worse.
Statistics Canada drilled into the industry data further and reported:
Based on respondent feedback, the largest estimated impacts of COVID-19 on manufacturing sales in dollar terms were in the transportation equipment (-$2.9 billion), fabricated metal product (-$376 million), petroleum and coal product (-$331 million), machinery (-$295 million), plastic and rubber product (-$277 million) and primary metal (-$219 million) industries. It should be noted that these estimated impacts are on an unadjusted basis and should be interpreted with caution. However, they provide an estimate of the magnitude to which COVID-19 may have lowered sales.
