More importantly, the ratio of public debt relative to the size of our economy is finally falling. This is a major contribution towards the sounder economic foundations that I mentioned earlier. Altogether then, 1997 turned out to be a good year for the Canadian economy. Prospects for 1998 and the ’Asian factor’ But what about prospects for the current year?
Japan’s labor force, namely, the population between 15 and 64 years old, already started to decline from the second half of the 1990s, and the number of actual workers has started to decline slightly, on average, since 2000. To maintain and raise growth rate when the number of workers is unlikely to grow, there is no way but to raise productivity.