The Financial Post reports in its Saturday edition that an advanced estimate suggests receipts for retailers were unchanged last month, following a 0.6-per-cent gain in October, Statistics Canada said Friday. The Post's Randy Thanthong-Knight writes that October's increase slightly missed expectations for a 0.7-per-cent jump in a Bloomberg survey of economists. Retail figures point to fading momentum in consumption as Bank of Canada policy-makers are expected to keep cutting borrowing costs early next year, albeit at a slower pace than the second half of this year. The central bank has reduced borrowing costs by 175 basis points since June, with a second straight half-percentage point cut last week. The agency revised retail sales for the third quarter upward to 1.1 per cent, from 0.9 per cent previously. The spending spike occurred as population growth slowed. The announcement by Ottawa in November of a sales tax holiday on some items beginning in mid-December may have encouraged some households to defer purchases, Andrew Grantham, economist at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, said in a report to investors. "Consumer spending has ... clearly improved relative to the trend seen earlier in the year," he wrote.