Staff research

This note presents the annual update of Bank of Canada staff estimates for growth in global potential output. These estimates served as key inputs to the analysis supporting the April 2025 Monetary Policy Report.

The market for electric vehicles (EVs) is growing rapidly. Subsidies and technological improvements are expected to increase the market share of EVs over the coming decade. In its base-case scenario, the International Energy Agency (IEA) expects EV use to rise from 4 million vehicles in 2018 to 120 million by 2030, or from 0.3 per cent to over 7 per cent of the global car fleet.

This note presents our estimates of potential output growth for the global economy through 2020. Overall, we expect global potential output growth to remain broadly stable over the projection horizon, averaging 3.3 per cent, although there is considerable uncertainty surrounding these estimates.

In the second half of 2014, oil prices experienced a sharp decline, falling more than 50 per cent between June 2014 and January 2015. A cursory glance at this oil price crash suggests similarities to developments in 1986, when the price of oil declined by more than 50 per cent, initiating an episode of relatively low oil prices that lasted for more than a decade.