canada

After 2020, a period when Canada's GDP contracted to -5.2%, 2021 and 2022 were years of recovery. While in 2021 GDP growth reached 4.5%, it is expected to settle at around 3.3% in 2022, showing a higher level of growth than pre-pandemic years. With regard to economic pressures arising from the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Canada's geographical remoteness and its domestic capacity to produce oil and gas continue to help protect the country from more severe effects.

However, the increase in prices of food, services and even electricity has been significant, so inflation is expected to have reached 6.9% by 2022, the highest since 1982. In this sense, the Central Bank is adopting restrictive monetary policies, such as increasing the reference interest rate, since ensuring inflation control is one of the country's priorities.

With the main economic indicators showing a positive evolution, the Public Debt ended 2021 at 112.9% and is expected to have decreased to 102.2% in 2022, reaching 98.7% in 2023.

The unemployment rate reached a historic low of 5.3% in 2022, driven by strong production growth, which led to an increase in employment. With slower output growth, the unemployment rate is expected to increase to 5.9% in 2023, in line with prepandemic levels.

In 2023, real GDP growth is expected to slow to 1.5%, due to the expected slowdown in the US economy and other major economies, which should penalise exports.At the same time, higher interest rates are expected to weigh on the growth of housing investment and private consumption and, on the other hand, business investment is expected to continue to recover from the low levels experienced during the COVID-19 crisis.