OTTAWA -- The latest reading on the how the Canadian economy fared at the end of last year is due out this morning and it's expected to show that growth slowed to a crawl for the final three months of 2019.

Statistics Canada is scheduled to release its reading on gross domestic product for December and the fourth quarter.

Economists on average expect the agency to report that growth in the fourth quarter slowed to an annualized pace of 0.3 per cent, according to financial markets data firm Refinitiv.

Statistics Canada reported in November that real gross domestic product growth slowed to an annualized rate of 1.3 per cent in the third quarter of last year compared with a reading of 3.5 per cent in the second quarter.

The GDP report comes amid worries about the impact of the novel coronavirus outbreak that began in China and its impact on the global economy and ahead of an interest rate announcement by the Bank of Canada next week.

The central bank kept its key interest rate on hold in January, but left the door open to the possibility of rate cuts in the future if weakness in the economy was more persistent than it expected.



