Canada's wholesale sales rose 0.9% in October, posting the largest gain in five months since May, with increase in sales of food, new motor vehicle parts and pharmaceuticals.
According to Statistics Canada, wholesale sales resulted to 49.19 billion Canadian dollars (49.90 billion US dollars). The rebound followed a 1.5% decline in September, the largest single-month drop since February 2011, which was a slight downward revision from the originally estimated 1.4%.
Sales were up in 8 provinces, with Quebec, Saskatchewan and British Columbia posting the most gains.Meanwhile, Ontario, Canada's most populated province, showed was the third decline for the last 4 months.
Wholesale inventories climbed 0.2% to 61.52 billion Canadia dollars, the tenth increase in 11 months.
The inventory-to-sales ratio, a measure of months required to exhaust inventories if sales stayed at the current level, declined to 1.25 from 1.26.