Canadian dollar and business outlook

By Commodity News Service Canada

WINNIPEG, August 11 – The Canadian dollar weakened against its
US counterpart Tuesday morning as Statistics Canada and Canada
Housing and Mortgage Corporation released data on housing starts and
building construction.

At 8:50 a.m. CDT the Canadian dollar was at US$0.7638 or C$1.3092
which compares with Monday’s North American close of US$0.7692, or
C$1.3001.

China devalued the yuan by two per cent on Tuesday, which
strengthened the greenback and pushed the Canadian dollar lower.

An August 2015 report from the Canada Housing and Mortgage
Corporation says there were 193,032 housing starts in July, down from
202,338 units in June.

Two reports from Statistics Canada found the composite price
indexes for both apartment building construction and non-residential
building construction grew 0.5 per cent in the second quarter
compared with the previous quarter.

The increase was the result of higher material prices and labour
costs, StatsCan says.

The TSX was weaker in early activity, down 129.46 points at 8:50
a.m. CDT to sit at 14,336.93.