Business conditions improved only slightly across the Canadian manufacturing sector in January, with subdued customer demand continuing to hold back production volumes and staff hiring. Moreover, manufacturers sought to reduce their inventory volumes in response to weak order books. Stocks of purchases dropped for the second month running, while post-production inventories were cut to the greatest extent since March 2019. On a more positive note, latest data pointed to a solid rebound in confidence towards the year ahead business outlook, which survey respondents partly attributed to hopes of an improvement in global ... (full story)