Canada’s economy expanded at an annualized pace of just 0.4 per cent in the first three months of the year, giving the country its weakest back-to-back quarters of growth since 2015.
The real gross domestic product reading for the first quarter followed a revised growth number of just 0.3 per cent in the previous quarter, Statistics Canada said Friday in a new report.
It was the slowest two-quarter stretch of growth since an oil-price plunge caused the economy to shrink over the first half of 2015.
Economists had expected growth at an annualized rate of 0.7 per cent for the first quarter, according to Thomson Reuters Eikon.
The Statistics Canada report said downward pressure on first-quarter growth was driven by weakness in net trade as imports increased 1.9 per cent and export volumes dropped one per cent for their first quarterly decrease since 2017.
