Background
After each quarterly release of the National Economic Accounts data, Bank of Canada staff analyze the Canadian and international economies and produce forecasts for many macroeconomic variables. These forecasts are:
- provided to Governing Council in preparation for monetary policy decisions;
- saved along with the relevant historical real-time data and released once a year with a five-year lag.
For more details about the Staff Economic Projections database, see Champagne, Poulin-Bellisle and Sekkel (2018), Staff Working Paper No. 2018-52.
Data
Projection data is available in the CSV, JSON, and XML formats provided by our Valet API.
Our Valet API is designed to help you integrate your applications and processes with our data. For details, please see our documentation.
Real Gross Domestic Product
Vintages available from 1986Q4 to 2018Q4.
Nominal Gross Domestic Product
Vintages available from 1982Q2 to 2018Q4.
Implicit Price Deflator for GDP
Vintages available from 1986Q4 to 2018Q4.
Nominal Gross National Expenditure
Vintages available from 1970Q4 to 1986Q4. Missing vintages in 1971Q2 and 1973Q4.
Implicit Price Deflator for GNE
Vintages available from 1970Q4 to 1986Q3. Missing vintages in 1971Q2 and 1973Q4.
Personal Consumption Expenditures
Vintages available: 1982Q2 to 1999Q4 and 2011Q2 to 2018Q4.
Deflator for Personal Consumption Expenditures
Vintages available from 1982Q2 to 1999Q4 and 2011Q2 to 2018Q4.
Investment (Gross fixed capital formation)
Vintages available from 1982Q2 to 2018Q4.
Inventory Investment
Vintages available: 1982Q2 to 1999Q4 and 2011Q1 to 2018Q4.
Residential Investment
Vintages available from 1982Q2 to 2001Q1, 2001Q3 to 2004Q4 and 2011Q2 to 2018Q4.
Government Expenditures
Vintages available from 1982Q2 to 2018Q4.
Exports of Goods and Services
Vintages available from 1982Q2 to 2018Q4.
Imports of Goods and Services
Vintages available from 1982Q2 to 2018Q4.
Sum of Personal consumption expenditures, residential investment and investment in inventories (CIRINV)
Vintages available from 1993Q3 to 2011Q1.
Deflator for CIRINV
Vintages available from 1993Q3 to 2011Q1.
Output gap
Vintages available from 1987Q1 to 2018Q4.
Consumer Price Index
Vintages available from 1973Q3 to 2018Q4. Missing vintage in 1973Q4.
Core Consumer Price Index
Vintages available from 1980Q1 to 2018Q4.
Unemployment rate
Vintages available from 1982Q2 to 2018Q4.
U.S. / CAD nominal exchange rate
Vintages available from 1974Q2 to 2018Q4.
Staff projection policy rate
This is the implied policy rate path that is run through the staff projection. It may differ from Governing Council’s actual policy rate.
The policy rates used in the staff projection are:
The policy rates used in the staff projection are:
- The Bank rate (from 1982Q2 to 1993Q2, and from 2007Q3 to 2018Q4).
- The 3-month Commercial Paper rate (from 1993Q3 to 2007Q2).
5-year Federal Government bonds rate
Vintages available from 2011Q1 to 2018Q4.
Structure
Series
Each series download:
- is organized by variable;
- contains one time series per projection for each variable.
Each series represents a snapshot of
- the historical data available to staff at a specific point in time;
- the forecasts produced by staff at that time.
Notation
Series names describe the variable and the projection (or “vintage”) date. Observations from before the vintage date are historical data, and those on or after the vintage date are forecasts.
For example, in the case of SWP-GDP1987Q1:
- The series name refers to GDP as of the first quarter (Q1) of 1987.
- Observations before 1987Q1 are historical data.
- Observations from 1987Q1 onward are forecasts.