(Ottawa) Canada recorded its largest trade deficit in the last nine months in March with a decline in both imports and exports, Statistics Canada announced Thursday.
The Canadian trade balance thus returned to the red in the third month of the year, going from a surplus of 476 million Canadian dollars (324 million euros) in February to a deficit of 2.3 billion in March.
In a press release, the federal agency specifies that this is “the largest trade deficit since June 2023”.
This return to the red is mainly due to the drop in gold exports, which reached an all-time high in February with numerous “high value gold” deliveries made to the United Kingdom and Switzerland.
“Exports of gold in raw form were the main factor behind the monthly variation in exports,” indicated the statistics institute, specifying however that “this level of activity was not repeated in March “.
Canada also observed, for a sixth month, a decline in crude oil exports, a decline which “coincided with the unplanned closure of refineries in the American Midwest”, an important destination for Canadian crude.
In the end, Canada’s total merchandise exports fell by 5.3% and imports fell by 1.2%.
Both exports and imports with the United States, Canada’s largest trading partner, declined, pushing the Canadian trade surplus with its southern neighbor to $6.5 billion in March.
On the other hand, Canada’s trade deficit with other countries widened, “from $8 billion in February to $8.8 billion in March.”