Foreign Buying of Canada Securities Almost Doubles in September

Foreign net purchases of Canadian securities almost doubled in September from the month before on government bond sales, the federal statistics agency said.

Purchases totaled C$13.9 billion ($13.9 billion) in September and the estimated August purchase was increased to C$7.56 billion from an initial C$6.90 billion, Statistics Canada said today in Ottawa.

Total purchases included C$8.94 billion of government bonds and C$1.52 billion of money-market paper, the report said. Non- Canadians purchased a net C$3.29 billion of the country’s stocks, led by shares of financial companies.

Year-to-date securities purchases of C$62.7 billion trailed last year’s comparable total of C$70.1 billion, Statistics Canada said.

Canadians bought a net C$6.03 billion of foreign securities in September, following a sale of C$1.68 billion in August, led by C$4.45 billion of stocks and C$1.58 billion of debt. The September purchases included C$1.73 billion of Maple bonds, Canadian-dollar debt issued by foreign organizations, the most since October 2007.

To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Quinn in Ottawa at gquinn1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Christopher Wellisz at cwellisz@bloomberg.net; David Scanlan at dscanlan@bloomberg.net.