Paul Martin's Business Update - October 6th, 2014

The importance of exporting to this province’s economic well-being is growing.

The last couple of years have been strong ones for the province’s export community with total sales passing the $30 billion mark annually. We now have data for the first two-thirds of this year and it looks like 2014 is going to be the strongest yet.

The latest figures come from August. At $3.1 billion for the month, a jump of more than 30 percent over last August, we are currently 10-percent ahead of last year’s pace. The big winners included the farm sector.

Saskatchewan has long been one of the country’s leading exporters. With a small population base, we cannot possibly consume everything we produce here at home. So we have to find markets outside the province to take our excess output. To put it another way, imagine if Saskatchewan farmers or oil producers could sell only to Saskatchewan consumers….most of our land would go out of production.

As a percentage of our economy, Saskatchewan relies more heavily on export markets than virtually any other jurisdiction in the nation.

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