Commodity Price Index

The Bank of Canada commodity price index (BCPI) is a chain Fisher price index of the spot or transaction prices in U.S. dollars of 26 commodities produced in Canada and sold in world markets. You can download BCPI data and read about its components and methodology.

Data

Monthly BCPI

• CSV
• JSON
• XML

Weekly BCPI

• CSV
• JSON
• XML

Annual BCPI

• CSV
• JSON
• XML

Components

A Note on Prices

The prices for many of the commodities in the index are the averages of daily data. Prices for some commodities are available only weekly (these are usually available several weeks after the reference period) or monthly (usually available two months after the reference period). The weekly series are the averages for the five business days ending with the Wednesday. The monthly series are the averages for all days in the month. When data for the reference period are not immediately available, the most recent available data are repeated until the actual data are received. The series are revised when the actual data become available.

As of August 11, 2016, the source for lumber in the BCPI switched from Bloomberg Energy to Random Lengths. The data has been updated retroactively back to January 8, 2010.

As of October 26, 2017, the coal price series has been revised over history to reflect the most up-to-date data from Natural Resources Canada.

As of March 28, 2018, the source of the barley price has been switched from the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange to the Cash Grain Bid via Bloomberg L.P..

Methodology

The BCPI weights are constructed using primarily data from input-output (IO) tables computed by Statistics Canada, which are only available with a four-year lag (currently up to 2015). Other data sources are used when the IO disaggregation is insufficient to permit individual commodity value calculations.

Projecting Weights Forward

In the previous methodology, the weights were held constant at their last historical values for those years where the input-output data were not yet available. The current BCPI methodology, as presented in the July 2012 Monetary Policy Report, projects individual commodity weights from the Input-Output reference year (currently 2015) through the last period in which full-year historical price and production data is available (currently 2018).

The weights are approximated using changes in Canadian commodity prices and proxies of commodity production volumes. Specifically, the percentage change in Canadian production value (from which the weights are derived) is approximated by the product of the annual percentage changes in the commodity price and the estimated Canadian production volume. Production volumes are proxied using available data from official sources, including Statistics Canada, National Resources Canada, and the National Energy Board.

In addition, weights for the current year are now estimated based on projected annual percentage changes in commodity prices. These weights are reassessed four times a year to reflect the most recent projection of commodity prices. Updated weights are published on the website the Thursday following the release of the Monetary Policy Report.

Crude Oil Component Weights

The weights of individual oil benchmarks are inferred over history from Statistics Canada’s total crude oil production values using the same methodology described above. Volume estimates are taken from the National Energy Board. Prior to 1996, the value shares of each crude oil component are held constant at their 1996 level. A complete breakdown of the historical crude oil component weights can be found in the “Weights Data” link displayed above.