The Canadian Dollar rate switched over to growth at the Forex currency market on Wednesday after the decline this week.

Forex forecast: MACD indicator is in the negative area for the pair USD/CAD and is going down, giving a pair sell signal. Stochastic Oscillator is giving a pair sell signal again today, being in the neutral zone.

Forex recommendations: if current sentiments will be maintained, traders’ targets today will be the levels of 0.9850 and 0.9810.

As became known yesterday, level of retail sales in Canada declined by 0.2% m/m in December, while sales excluding cars increased by 0.6% m/m.

Last week the head of the Bank of Canada Mark Carney noted that if economic data for QIV will be positive, it can encourage the revision of the view on economy by the Central Bank. Thus, Central Bank expects the growth of GDP by 2.3% y/y in the past quarter. The report will be made public as early as 28 February. 

Earlier the Imperial Bank of Commerce reported the revision of its GDP forecast for QIV 2010 to 2.6% against the previous level of 2.3%; the Bank anticipates that economic growth this year will be by 2.6% (2.4% earlier).

The meeting of Bank of Canada was held in January where the regulator decided to keep interest rate unchanged, at the level of 1%. Given the non-uniform statistical data on the nearest neighboring country, the USA, a step is perfectly logical.

According to the experts from the International Monetary Fund, Canadian economy will grow by 2.3% y/y in the current year; this was a downgrade compared with the forecast of October (+2.7% y/y).

At the same time IMF expects that in 2012 Canadian economy will increase by 2.7%. The exact figures of the GDP growth in the country will be published on 28 February but meanwhile IMF supposes that the indicator will be at the level of 2.9% (earlier – 3%).

As for the exchange rate of the Canadian Dollar in the current year, IMF believes that if average prices for the oil will be maintained at about 90 dollars for the barrel (in October- $79 per barrel), the CAD will consolidate with the help of fundamental support provided by the raw material economy of the country.