Statistics
Canada announced on Friday that the Industrial Product Price Index (IPPI) declined
0.8 per cent m-o-m in August,
following a downwardly revised 0.1 per cent m-o-m fall (from unchanged m-o-m) in the previous month. This
represented the steepest monthly decrease since December 2023 (-1.6 per cent
m-o-m).
Economists had forecast
the IPPI to drop 0.3 per cent m-o-m in August.
According to
the report, the August fall in the headline indicator was due to decreases in 11 out of 21 product categories, driven
by energy and petroleum products (-5.0 per cent m-o-m), meat, fish and dairy
products (-1.7 per cent m-o-m), and primary non-ferrous metal products (-1.6
per cent m-o-m). Meanwhile, the lumber and other wood products (+2.1 per cent
m-o-m), chemicals and chemical products (+1.0 per cent m-o-m), and textile and
leather products (+0.8 per cent m-o-m) categories posted the biggest gains.
In y-o-y terms,
the IPPI went up 0.2 per cent in August, following a downwardly revised 2.8 per
cent jump (from +2.9 per cent) in July. This was the weakest annual increase
since a decline in March (-0.5 per cent).
The report also
unveiled that the prices of raw materials purchased by manufacturers operating
in Canada, as measured by the Raw Materials Price Index (RMPI), plunged 3.1 per
cent m-o-m in August after an unrevised
0.7 per cent m-o-m gain in
the previous month. Economists had forecast a 2.0 per cent m-o-m drop. The tumble
in RMPI was primarily led by a decrease
in costs of crude energy products (-5.0 per cent m-o-m).
On a y-o-y
basis, the RMPI fell 2.5 per cent, following an unrevised 4.1 per cent surge in July. This represented the first annual
decrease since February (-4.7 per cent).