Foreign investment in Canadian securities strengthened for a third straight month in March, according to figures released Wednesday morning by Statistics Canada. The agency put the figure at $17.2 billion, and added that foreign acquisitions were mainly composed of securities issued by Canadian private corporations.
Meanwhile, StatsCan says, Canadian investment in foreign securities amounted to $2.3 billion and was led by U.S. corporate instruments.
As a result, Canada’s international transactions in securities generated a net inflow of funds of $14.9 billion in March. For the first quarter, a record net inflow of $52.8 billion was recorded, led by sustained foreign investment in Canadian securities in all three months.
Canada is the world’s eleventh-largest economy as of 2015, with a nominal GDP of approximately US$1.79 trillion. It is a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Group of Eight (G8), and is one of the world’s top ten trading nations, with a highly globalized economy.
Canada is a mixed economy, ranking above the US and most western European nations on the Heritage Foundation’s index of economic freedom, and experiencing a relatively low level of income disparity. The country’s average household disposable income per capita is over US$23,900, higher than the OECD average. Furthermore, the Toronto Stock Exchange is the seventh largest stock exchange in the world by market capitalization, listing over 1,500 companies with a combined market capitalization of over US$2 trillion as of 2015.
In 2014, Canada’s exports totalled over C$528 billion, while its imported goods were worth over $523 billion, of which approximately $349 billion originated from the United States, $49 billion from the European Union, and $35 billion from China. The country’s 2014 trade surplus totalled C$5.1 billion, compared with a C$46.9 billion surplus in 2008.
Since the early 20th century, the growth of Canada’s manufacturing, mining, and service sectors has transformed the nation from a largely rural economy to an urbanized, industrial one. Like many other developed nations, the Canadian economy is dominated by the service industry, which employs about three-quarters of the country’s workforce. However, Canada is unusual among developed countries in the importance of its primary sector, in which the forestry and petroleum industries are two of the most prominent components.
Photo credit: Mike Foote via Visual Hunt / CC BY-NC-ND
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