Instant view: Canada's economy expands by 1% in the third quarter

TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's economy grew as expected at an annualized rate of 1% in the third quarter, according to data released on Friday, helped by household and government spending and partly offset by lower business investments and exports.

For the month of September, gross domestic product increased 0.1%, slower than expected, Statistics Canada data showed. A preliminary estimate showed growth of 0.1% in October.

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COMMENTS

ANDREW GRANTHAM, SENIOR ECONOMIST, CIBC CAPITAL MARKETS

"Despite the positive historic revisions and better underlying detail within the Q3 data, today's GDP figures point to a weaker recent trend in activity than the Bank of Canada was expecting and is supportive of a 50 bp (basis point) cut at the December meeting, although next week's employment figures are still likely more important in making a final determination."

DOUG PORTER, CHIEF ECONOMIST, BMO CAPITAL MARKETS

"There are no surprises in terms of the latest figures. The headline quarterly numbers was pretty much exactly as Statistics Canada estimated a month ago. That is not to say it was a good number. Definitely disappointing given on where expectations were at the start of the quarter and the quarter clearly shows the economy struggled through the summer and early fall. The other thing is monthly results for September and October really did not pick up and this suggests that growth likely remains relatively sluggish through into the early part of the fourth quarter."

NATHAN JANZEN, ASSISTANT CHIEF ECONOMIST, ROYAL BANK OF CANADA

"This is kind of in line with our own base case assumption. We've had a persistent slowing in the Canadian economy, and if you look at kind of forward-looking indicators, like job openings, continuing to decline pretty sharply on balance, there are, at least in the near term, there are some indicators that have still been on the weak side. So it's not surprising to see GDP growth continue to underperform. ... It reinforces that interest rates are higher than they need to be to get inflation sustainably back to 2%."

(Reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny; Editing by Fergal Smith)