Removal of subsidized credit, reduction in import tariffs, current account and partial capital account liberalization, increased dependence on market mechanism to allocate resources, withdrawal of the Government from running businesses have ushered in higher rates of investment, greater efficiency in resource use and promoted more rapid export growth in most of our countries.
In terms of economic structure, the primary production sectors, combined, are of similar size in the two countries (Table 1). Australia has less manufacturing, but more mining than Canada. There are also some notable differences in the composition of our mining sectors. Both these turn out to have been of some importance over recent years, as I shall point out shortly.