Inter-provincial trade key source of recent economic growth: StatsCan

International exports may have softened, but Canada’s inter-provincial exports have been a key source of economic growth since 2000, Statistics Canada is reporting. That’s in stark contrast to the exporting trends between 1992 and 2000, when international sales led the growth.

During the 1990s, Canada’s international exports grew an average of 12.4 per cent per year, while inter-provincial trade expanded at only half that pace (an average of 6.3 per cent). From 2000 to 2002, inter-provincial exports rose at a slower annual rate of 3.2 per cent, but international exports actually dropped by 2.1 per cent per year.

Don’t discount your export markets altogether, however. Foreign sales of goods and services in 2002 nearly doubled the value of inter-provincial exports. Provinces and territories sold $443.1 billion abroad, and $232.5 billion within Canada.

In 2002, inter-provincial exports accounted for about a fifth of Canada’s Gross Domestic Product — about the same share as 1992. However, international exports accounted for 38 per cent of GDP in 2002, up substantially from 26 per cent a decade earlier.

Gains in international sales from 2000 to 2002 were concentrated in Atlantic Canada and Manitoba. New Brunswick boasted Canada’s most export-oriented economy in 2002, and was the only province in which the growth in international exports from 2000 to 2002 outstripped the growth in inter-provincial exports.