OTTAWA, July 20 (Reuters) - Canadian wholesale trade fell in May for the eighth consecutive month to the lowest since December 2005, pushed down 0.3 percent entirely by lower prices, Statistics Canada said on Monday.
However the decline was the smallest of the eight months of falls and was a better result than almost all analysts had predicted. The median forecast of a Reuters survey was for a 2.1 percent drop.
The federal agency also said foreigners bought a record C$19.38 billion ($17.46 billion) of Canadian bonds in the month. Canadian firms, mainly in the energy and resource sectors, issued C$9.3 billion of new bonds in foreign markets, nearly all U.S.-dollar denominated in the U.S. market; and foreigners bought C$6.5 billion of bonds on secondary markets.
A Statistics Canada official said the previous record was C$12.6 billion in November 2006.
It took overall foreign acquisitions of Canadian securities to a five-year high of C$18.89 billion. The previous high had been C$21.4 billion in April 2004.
Canadians sold C$985 million in foreign securities, their first such divestment this year. ($1=$1.11 Canadian) (Reporting by Randall Palmer; Editing by James Dalgleish)
