Section 2: Economic events

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Canada

Nexen received regulatory approval to build Pads 14 and 15 at its Long Lake oilsands project, as well as to develop a property south of Long Lake. Kinder Morgan announced a $5 billion expansion plan to increase capacity of its Trans Mountain pipeline from Edmonton to Vancouver from 300,000 barrels per day to 850,000. It also announced plans to reverse flow on its 3,000 km Alberta-to-Ontario Cochin pipeline to move condensates (liquid hydrocarbons) west to the oilsands. Demand for condensates in Alberta's oilsands is expected to double to 400,000 barrels per day by 2020. EnCana sold a third of its interest in the Horseshoe Canyon coal bed methane field to Japan's Toyota Tsusho for $602 million. TransCanada received a three-year extension from Alberta's provincial regulators to build its natural gas-fired Saddlebrook power plant near High River due to transmission constraints.

Alimentation Couche-Tard agreed to buy Norwegian-owned Statoil Fuel and Retail ASA (SFR) for $2.8 billion, allowing the company to expand into the Baltics, Poland and western Russia.

The Bank of Canada maintained its target for the overnight rate at 1%.

A number of provincial governments tabled their 2012-13 budgets. Highlights include:

1. For Newfoundland and Labrador, a forecast deficit of $258.4 million, a 1.7% increase in program spending, and a freeze on post-secondary tuition fees with no interest charged on provincial student loans.
2. For Prince Edward Island, a forecast deficit of $74.9 million, plans to introduce a 14% HST as of April 1, 2013, reduction of 300 civil service positions over three years and increases to various licenses, fees, permits and services.
3. For Nova Scotia, a forecast deficit of $211.2 million, overall reduction in program spending of 1.2% including a 2.5% increase in health spending, a cut in the small business tax from 4% to 3.5% effective January 1, 2013, and a reduction in the HST from 15% to 14% in 2014 and to 13% in 2015.
4. For Manitoba, a forecast deficit of $460 million, a 3.9% reduction in overall program spending including increases of 3.5% for education and 2.8% for health, freezing or cutting the budgets in ten of its smaller departments, increased fees for services and licenses, an increase of 2.5 cents a litre to the gas tax and expanding the provincial sales tax to include some forms of insurance and cosmetic services.

World

General Motors announced plans to double its production capacity in China to 5 million cars a year by 2016.

Effective April 16, 2012, China will allow the value of its currency to rise or fall by 1% from the price it sets at the start of each trading day, compared with 0.5% previously.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) maintained the target range for the federal funds rate at 0% to ¼%.

The Bank of Japan increased its asset-buying plan to $872 billion (US) and pledged to buy longer-term government bonds.

India's central bank lowered its benchmark repo rate by 50 basis points to 8%, the first cut in three years.

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