It isnt over with comodities - BOCBy Julian Beltrame, The Canadian Press
OTTAWA - China's hunger for oil and minerals will continue to drive up commodity prices for years to come and be a key factor in global demand for Canadian resources and the loonie's continued strength, suggests a Bank of Canada report published Thursday.
The paper in the bank's fall review says China's economy has been expanding by an annual average of 9.7 per cent for the past quarter-century and there appears to be no end in sight.
But it was after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 that the economy of the world's most populous country began to assert itself on the world stage, with both positive and negative consequences.
"In terms of commodity imports, China's economic and trade developments appear to have grown much faster than expected, causing a larger-than-anticipated increase in global demand for oil and metals," the report says.
"Together, these two effects help to explain the recent change in the relative prices of these goods."
Canada's economy has ridden the wave of global commodity prices since 2002, when the Canadian dollar began its move from under 70 cents US to parity with the greenback this year for the first time since 1976.