Wednesday, April 1, 2015

TD Is Predicting Weak First Quarter for Canadian GDP; Surly Hamiltonian Unsurprised

There's an article from the Financial Post out, entitled "Canadian economy to ‘weather oil-price storm,’ but expect very weak first quarter: TD." In the article are some TD predictions on the 2015 Canadian economy:

"TD Economics estimates gross domestics product will grow 1.9% this year, compared to 2.5% in 2014. The first quarter of 2015 will be especially weak — at an annualized pace of just 0.5% — but each quarter will improve after that. The bank is forecasting overall GDP growth in 2016 of 2.2%."

US growth isn't looking particularly strong in the first quarter and I'm not at all surprised by TD's prediction that the first quarter GDP growth for Canada will be just 0.5%. I haven't really seen any economic indicators related to the first quarter that have been particularly good.

Obviously Alberta is sucking due to low oil prices, but Ontario isn't doing so great either (just check out the previous post here on low construction starts in Ontario in February or the mediocre employment numbers in January and February).

Amazingly there's an RBC report (warning PDF) that Ontario will have 3.3% GDP growth in 2015. And that report is from this March! Personally, I don't see it. With weak US growth in the first quarter, Ontario's likely won't be so great and it will be hard to make up the weak first quarter number to get to 3.3%.


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