TORONTO — Canadian sales of new cars and trucks opened the year on a resoundingly positive note, but may have fallen off last month, Statistics Canada suggested Wednesday.
The federal agency — which collects data on monthly retail sales in dollars and in units of new vehicles sold in Canada — found a 15.4 per cent rise in vehicles sold in January to 153,623 units from 133,146 units sold in December.
The data indicates sales rose at the fastest pace in more than 15 years in January, economist Robert Kavcic said Wednesday in a report by BMO Economics.
And while sales are likely to dip in the short term, the industry is headed in the right direction, he said.
“January’s growth was largely the result of inventories becoming available after the auto-sector supply-chain was disrupted last year,” he said.
“Sales rose across the country, with Ontario and Quebec seeing the biggest increases.”
Japanese automakers were hit hard after last year’s earthquake and tsunami that hampered production.
Meanwhile, interest rates remain at ultra low levels making auto loans cheap and a spike in gasoline prices has also pushed some drivers to showrooms in search of more fuel-efficient vehicles.
Statistics Canada did not provide precise numbers for last month, but said preliminary industry data suggests sales fell 7.0 per cent in February.
The federal agency’s report stands in contrast to the figures released by some of the world’s largest automakers and a report from an industry analyst that indicated sales jumped 9.4 per cent in February from the month before.
DesRosiers Automotive Consultants said in its report — considered a reliable, if preliminary, metric for measuring the industry’s health — that overall vehicle sales rose to 106,712 last month from 97,500 in January.
Meanwhile, DesRosiers reported a monthly decrease of 14.9 per cent in January to 97,500 from 114,600 vehicles sold in December.
The difference stems from how the reports are calculated.
Statistics Canada data — which is released about six weeks after the end of the month — is based on surveys completed by automakers who consolidate totals from their dealers’ monthly reports on new vehicle sales. Its numbers are used in the calculation of gross domestic product growth.
But the DesRosiers compilation, which comes out on the first of each month, the same day automakers report their results, uses information from the automakers, the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers of Canada and the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association (CVMA).