HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, Feb. 12 (UPI) -- Canadian consumer confidence in January rose 3.1 points from the previous month as Canadians expressed financial optimism, the Conference Board said.
"Consumers were quite optimistic about their current and future financial situation, and expressed more optimism about future job conditions," Conference Board economist Alicia Coughlin said Monday.
The board's consumer confidence index reached 101.1 in January, the highest since April but slightly below January 2006.
More than half of consumers, 52.4 percent, said right now was the best time to make a major purchase, up 1.9 points, whereas 34.4 percent said they felt it was a bad time, 3.7 percent fewer than in December.
Respondents who were more optimistic about their finances in six months rose 1.3 percentage points to 31 percent, and the proportion of people who said they would be worse off dropped 0.1 point to 8.5 percent.
The telephone survey of more than 2,000 people was taken from Jan. 11-17. The Ottawa-based Conference Board did not give the probable margin of error.
