The Canadian government’s export financing agency has an optimistic prediction about Canada’s food export potential.
Last week, the Export Development Corporation predicted that during the next six years, the value of agriculture and food exports will rise on average 11 percent per year.
By 2003, said an EDC official, the value of exports could be $27 billion.
Last year, exports were worth $18.8 billion.
Agriculture Canada has projected exports by 2000 to be worth $20 billion to $23 billion.
Bryan Gormley, an EDC economic researcher, said the optimistic prediction assumes commodity prices will rise and markets for bulk commodities such as grain will be strong.
“We believe markets like China will be good markets and we base much of this projection on strong sales of bulk commodities like grain,” he said.
The EDC projections assume there will be some growth of processed, value-added commodities but the base of the export growth will be bulk commodities.
