SINGAPORE, March 14 — The Australian and New Zealand dollars fell after Chinese economic data over the weekend added to signs of a slowdown in the South Pacific nations’ largest export market.

The Aussie, kiwi and Canada’s loonie were the worst performers against the greenback among their Group-of-10 peers today after the world’s second-largest economy reported lower-than-forecast retail sales and industrial production on Saturday.

Losses in Canada’s dollar deepened as prices dropped for crude oil, the country’s biggest export until last year.

All three commodity currencies advanced in February.

“Concerns about the slowdown in China’s growth are still lingering and clouding the outlook,” Hiroyuki Yamamuro, an analyst in Tokyo at Ueda Harlow Ltd, which provides margin- trading services, wrote in a note to clients.

Australia’s dollar fell 0.2 per cent to 75.53 US cents (RM3.05) as of 8:48am in Tokyo, while New Zealand’s currency dropped 0.2 per cent to 67.36 cents. Canada’s dollar declined 0.2 per cent to C$1.3240 (RM4.07) per greenback.

The kiwi halted a two-day recovery from a plunge sparked last week after the Reserve Bank of New Zealand unexpectedly cut interest rates.

China’s industrial output rose 5.4 per cent from a year earlier in January and February, the National Bureau of Statistics said March 12, compared with the 5.6 per cent median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg.

Retail sales climbed 10.2 per cent from a year earlier, missing the 11 per cent projected gain in a separate survey. — Bloomberg