Report

Economic and Fiscal Outlook – October 2024

Oct 17, 2024

This report provides a baseline projection to help parliamentarians gauge potential economic and fiscal outcomes under current policy settings.

Supplementary Data (xlsx)
Supplementary Data: Population estimates on July 1.

Highlights

PBO projects growth in the Canadian economy to remain tepid in 2024. Interest rates will continue to restrain growth in consumer spending and business investment. We expect real GDP growth will rebound to 2.2 per cent in 2025, as lower borrowing costs provide a boost to consumer spending and business investment, and exports pickup.
With the ongoing excess supply in the economy, consumer price index (CPI) inflation is on track to return to its 2 per cent target. We anticipate the Bank of Canada will continue to gradually reduce its policy rate until it reaches its estimated neutral level of 2.75 percent in the second quarter of 2025.
We estimate that there was a budgetary deficit of $46.8 billion (1.6 per cent of GDP) in 2023-24. For the current fiscal year, 2024-25, PBO projects the budgetary deficit to slightly decline to $46.4 billion (1.5 per cent of GDP) under status quo policy. Assuming no new measures are introduced, and existing temporary measures sunset as scheduled, the deficit is projected to resume its downward trajectory, falling to $22.5 billion (0.6 per cent of GDP) in 2029-30.
PBO expects the federal debt-to-GDP ratio to be 42.2 per cent in 2023-24 and 2024-25. Assuming no new measures and existing temporary measures sunset as scheduled, the federal debt ratio is projected to fall to 39.0 per cent in 2029-30, well above its pre-pandemic level of 31.2 per cent of GDP in 2019-20.
PBO projects the debt service ratio (that is, public debt charges relative to total revenues) to rise to 10.6 in 2024-25 from 10.3 per cent in 2023-24. As the effective interest rate on debt edges higher in 2024-25, we project the debt service ratio to increase further and reach 11.2 per cent in 2029-30—well above its pre-pandemic record low of 7.0 per cent in 2018-19.