Overview of the Saskatchewan economy

To try to eliminate the effects of price changes on growth, the first examination will look at the rate of growth in real GDP, as in Chart 4, below, which compares Saskatchewan’s real economic growth over the previous year in percentage terms with that of Canada for each of the five years from 2001 to 2006. [...] The increase in the value of production as shown by nominal GDP growth has been even greater than the rate of growth in real GDP and by a greater factor for Saskatchewan than for most other provinces, to the point where Saskatchewan’s nominal GDP has expanded at a rate above the national rate over the last number of years. [...] From another perspective, the “service producing” sectors of the Saskatchewan economy (on the left side of Chart 12) represented 66.8 per cent of all activity in 2006, as compared to the remaining 33.2 per cent of activity in the “goods producing” sectors (on the right side of Chart 12). [...] The following chapters will examine some of the more focused data on the Saskatchewan economy and help to illustrate the growing importance of the non-agricultural sectors of the economy and the gradual move from a goods-based economy towards the current service-based economy. [...] The evolution and development of the Saskatchewan manufacturing sector is illustrated in Chart 13, below, which shows the value of manufacturing shipments in the province over the past five years.