Up 13.3 per cent, down across province and nation
Province
The Vancouver area bucked a downward trend across most of the rest of the country in the value of building permits issued in August, Statistics Canada said yesterday.
The value of building permits rose 13.3 per cent between July and August to $481.8 million, StatsCan said.
For B.C. as a whole, however, building permits fell 6.9 per cent to $828.7 million as the value of residential permits dropped six per cent and that of non-residential permits lost nine per cent, the federal agency said.
Across Canada, building permits fell more than expected in August as both the residential and non-residential sectors registered big declines, StatsCan said.
The value of construction permits fell 13.5 per cent to $5.6 billion in August from the previous month, the federal agency said. Most economists had expected a decline of between 1.3 and 1.5 per cent in August. On an annual basis, permits were down 0.7 per cent from August 2007, the agency said.
The residential sector posts a 9.3-per- cent decline to $3.4 billion in August from the previous month.
“This decline was mainly due to a 17.5- per-cent drop in multi-family dwellings, coupled with a 3.8-per-cent decline in single-family dwellings,”it said. “New Brunswick (up 42.5 per cent), Saskatchewan (up 2.6 per cent) and Prince Edward Island (up 1.5 per cent) were the only provinces with increases in the residential sector.”
The value in the non-residential permits fell 19.3 per cent to $2.2 billion as a result of declines in all main areas — industrial, commercial and institutional.
“After double-digit increases in April and May, the value of non-residential permits declined for the second time in three months,” Statistics Canada said.
Charmaine Buskas, economics strategist at TD Securities, said the report shows overall economic activity is cooling.
© The Vancouver Province 2008