Canada December budget gap up slightly; fiscal year-to-date down

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's federal budget gap widened slightly in December from a year earlier, but the deficit for the first nine months of the fiscal year was still down 19 percent, the finance department said on Friday.

The monthly Fiscal Monitor said the government spent C$572 million ($561 million) more in December than it took in. The gap in December 2011 was C$538 million .

For the period April to December, the deficit shrank to C$12.99 billion from C$16.06 billion in the same period in 2011. This amounts to a fraction of the budget deficits in other leading Western countries after adjusting for the size of the economies.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says he plans to balance the budget by 2015, although he has conceded the heavily discounted price for Canadian crude oil is hurting government revenues.

Government revenues rose in December from a year earlier, but the 2.8 percent increase was smaller than the 3.8 percent rise in program expenses.

In his November fiscal update, Flaherty projected a deficit for the 2012-13 fiscal year of C$26.0 billion, including an adjustment for risk. For the year that will start April 2013, he forecast a deficit of C$16.5 billion.

(Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson; and Peter Galloway)

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Canada December budget gap up slightly; fiscal year-to-date down

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's federal budget gap widened slightly in December from a year earlier, but the deficit for the first nine months of the fiscal year was still down 19 percent, the finance department said on Friday.

The monthly Fiscal Monitor said the government spent C$572 million ($561 million) more in December than it took in. The gap in December 2011 was C$538 million .

For the period April to December, the deficit shrank to C$12.99 billion from C$16.06 billion in the same period in 2011. This amounts to a fraction of the budget deficits in other leading Western countries after adjusting for the size of the economies.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says he plans to balance the budget by 2015, although he has conceded the heavily discounted price for Canadian crude oil is hurting government revenues.

Government revenues rose in December from a year earlier, but the 2.8 percent increase was smaller than the 3.8 percent rise in program expenses.

In his November fiscal update, Flaherty projected a deficit for the 2012-13 fiscal year of C$26.0 billion, including an adjustment for risk. For the year that will start April 2013, he forecast a deficit of C$16.5 billion.

(Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson; and Peter Galloway)

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Canada house prices off 0.3 percent in January from December: Teranet

TORONTO (Reuters) - Canadian home prices fell for the fifth month in a row in January from December and the year-over-year price gain was the smallest since 2009 as the housing market continued to cool.

The Teranet-National Bank Composite House Price Index, which measures price changes for repeat sales of single-family homes, showed on Wednesday that overall prices fell 0.3 percent in January from a month earlier.

The index was up 2.7 percent from a year earlier, the smallest year-on-year gain since November 2009 and the 14th consecutive month of slowing house price inflation.

The report added to evidence that Canadian housing market activity has been slowing since the middle of 2012. Economists are debating whether the market will crash or manage a soft landing.

Canada's housing market avoided a meltdown after the financial crisis in 2009, helped by conservative lending standards and ultra-low interest rates.

But Canadian housing is swooning just as the U.S. market shows signs of recovery, in part because Canada's Conservative government last year tightened mortgage lending rules to slow the red-hot housing market.

The latest report showed prices dropped in January from December in seven of the 11 metropolitan markets surveyed, led by a 1.1 percent drop in Hamilton, a 0.8 percent decline in Vancouver and a 0.7 percent fall in Edmonton. Prices fell 0.4 percent in Toronto, 0.3 percent in Winnipeg, 0.2 percent in Montreal and 0.1 percent in Calgary.

Prices were up 1.4 percent in Quebec City and Victoria, 1.7 percent in Halifax, and 0.5 percent in Ottawa-Gatineau.

Year-on-year prices dropped 2.5 percent in Vancouver, but all of the other markets surveyed showed prices were still higher than a year ago.

Compared with January 2012, prices were 6.6 percent higher in Halifax, 6.0 percent higher in Quebec City, 5.9 percent higher in Hamilton, 5.3 percent higher in Toronto, 4.3 percent higher in Calgary, 3.4 percent higher in Winnipeg, 2.7 percent higher in Ottawa, 2.6 percent higher in Montreal, 2.0 percent higher in Edmonton and 1.1 percent higher in Victoria.

(Reporting by Andrea Hopkins; Editing by Janet Guttsman and Jeffrey Benkoe)

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