“There is no firm plan to go forward this year with respect to interest rates. We just have to watch and wait and see,” Flaherty told reporters in an interview in Shanghai.
He said Canada’s GDP was expected to grow 3.3 percent this year, up from an expectation of around 2.9 percent previously.
The Bank of Canada raised its key interest rate on June 1, the first G7 industrialised economy to do so after the global recession, but said the European debt crisis made its next move highly unpredictable.
The rate hike, to 0.5 percent from 0.25 percent, was a response to two quarters of extraordinarily strong growth.
Flaherty added that inflation would remain a concern.
“We have a relatively modest situation in Canada but interest rates have been very low. They couldn’t really be any lower, so people should expect over time that interest rates will go up and that there are inflationary pressures over time.”
He said the eurozone’s debt crisis was still volatile but noted it had not changed pressure on China to let the yuan become more flexible.
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