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B.C. has benefited from a broad-based surge in exports through 2021 that has carried through to the first months of 2022, said economist Ken Peacock.
“But it was all price effects, basically,” added Peacock, vice-president and chief economist for the Business Council of B.C. “High lumber prices, high natural gas prices.”
Those price-inflated figures helped bolster the provincial government’s balance sheet with a forecast of $3.9 billion in additional resource taxes and royalties, which is expected to generate a $706 million surplus on its 2022-23 budget.
But economic forecasts warn of a global economic slowdown, if not recession, in the face of a unified campaign among the world’s central banks to raise interest rates and tame inflation, Peacock said.
