Housing starts kick off

There will be a full menu of Canadian economic releases this week, starting today with some key data on home building, the confidence of business leaders and the state of lending conditions.

The Bank of Canada will again be front and centre as it releases its first-quarter surveys of business leaders and senior loan officers.

Eric Lascelles, chief economics strategist at TD Securities, said the central bank will be even more concerned with the results of its business survey than it was with the country's labour report, which was released Friday and showed a third straight month of job gains. Today's business outlook will give indications on things such as companies' sales expectations for the coming year, and plans to spend money and hire people.

"We expect to see moderate gains in anticipated hiring and investment decisions, and slight increases in expected input prices and output prices," Lascelles said. "The accompanying senior loan officer survey should show a further easing in credit conditions, with large firms more likely to report improvements than small firms."

Also Monday, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. will release housing-start numbers from March. Economists are expecting an annualized rate of 200,000, which would be the highest it's been since October 2008. CIBC World Markets economist Krishen Rangasamy said it could be as much as 205,000, thanks to the "early end to winter in various parts of the country" helping construction projects get underway.

On Tuesday, Statistics Canada is to release trade numbers from February. The median estimate among economists is that Canada had a trade surplus of $500 million, down from $800 million in January. Such a result would mark the fourth surplus in five months, which followed a period that saw five deficits in six months.

Manufacturing numbers from February are on tap for this coming Friday. The market consensus is for a 0.6 per cent rise in sales. While weaker than the 2.4 per cent gain in January, it would be the sixth straight time these monthly numbers have gone up.

("Business outlook, housing starts kick off busy week" prepared by Derek Abma/Financial Post/Vancouver Sun)