A Study On The International Competitiveness Of Canada’s Financial Services Trade

Service industry has been the main users and disseminators of the new knowledge and technology. It is crucial for Canada to transform itself from resource based economy to knowledge economy. In2010, Canada’s GDP is1.2095trillion dollars, service industry accounts for72%. Meanwhile the number of employment is17.04million, of which the service industry is13.3million. What’s more, the Canadian economy highly depends on the international trade, it has the highest degree of dependent on foreign trade among the seven big western industrialized countries and OECD countries. Financial service trade is an very important component of the service trade, it has a powerful impact to promote the further development of Canada’s international trade.Firstly, this paper analyzes the Canadian financial service trade’s characters and present situation from the following five aspects, trade scale, the deficit or surplus situation, regional structure, industry structure and trade protection. Secondly, it uses three indicators, the International Market Share Index, Trade Competitiveness Index and Revealed Comparative Advantage Index to make a comparison between Canada and the world’s major economies on the Financial Services Trade’s international competitiveness. And then, the research shows that Canada ranks the ninth in the11world economies. It means that Canadian financial services trade’s international competitiveness is relatively weak. Thirdly, it makes the quantitative analysis about the affecting factors on Canada financial service trade’s international competitiveness. Lastly, this paper gets a conclusion about the reason of the weakness and gives suggestions to improve the international competitiveness of financial service trade in Canada.