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Eastern Canada: Keeping Fingers Crossed for a Manufacturing Resurgence

nsidering that year-over-year inflation-adjusted gross domestic product (GDP) growth in Canada as a whole in 2015 was only +1.1%, the four provinces of the Atlantic Region performed better than might be supposed.

leaders-icon Only Newfoundland and Labrador, with an offshore energy sector that was seriously harmed by the steep plunge in the world price of oil, recorded a contraction, -2.2%. Nova Scotia’s GDP gain was positive, at +0.8%, although it fell below the national average. Both Prince Edward Island, at +1.5%, and New Brunswick, at +1.9%, outperformed Canada as a whole.

The current year, 2016, is continuing in a similar vein. Much of the prosperity within provinces in Canada depends on a limited number of export categories. In the Atlantic Region, the single most important export product is energy shipments from Newfoundland and Labrador. Those sales are -31% through the first half of 2016 versus the same January to June time frame of 2015.

The energy sector’s share of Newfoundland and Labrador’s total GDP has dropped by one-third from 30% to 20% over the past two years. Elsewhere in Canada, the energy sector’s slice of provincial GDP has also fallen dramatically in Alberta, from 30% to 22%. But that’s still not a decline of quite the same magnitude. Energy’s proportion of total Canada’s GDP is 9%.

Full Article- http://www.constructconnect.com/blog/economy/eastern-canada-keeping-fingers-crossed-manufacturing-resurgence/