CANADIAN IMMIGRATION NEWS

Canada ranked with the world's soundest bank system

Tuesday, 21 October 2008

A survey by the World Economic Forum has found that Canada has the world's soundest banking system, closely followed by Sweden, Luxembourg and Australia, as a financial crisis and bank failures shake world markets

The World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report based its findings on opinions of more than 12,000 senior executives in 134 countries who were asked to rank the soundness of bank's in their own countries in the annual survey by the Swiss-based non-profit think-tank.

Canadian banks received a score of 6.8, just ahead of Sweden (6.7), Luxembourg (6.7), Australia (6.7) and Denmark (6.7). U.K. banks collectively scored 6.0, narrowly behind the United States, Germany and Botswana, all with 6.1. France, in 19th place, scored 6.5 for soundness while Switzerland's banking system scored the same in 16th place, as did Singapore (13th).

The report supports the contention of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, who reassured Canadians that their bank deposits are in no jeopardy and that Canada's financial system is sound and solvent.

"I can assure Canadians that their deposits are safe," Flaherty told reporters prior to heading out to Washington for a meeting with his G7 counterparts and central bank governors, where they will discuss ways to end the current financial crisis which has toppled some of the world's major financial institutions and deepened the global credit crunch.

The bank soundness survey results were contained in the World Economic Forum's latest Global Competitiveness report, which ranked Canada 10th out of 134 countries in terms of overall competitiveness.

"Canada benefits from top-notch transport and telephony infrastructure; highly efficient markets, particularly labour and financial markets, and well-functioning and transparent institutions," it said. "In addition, the educational system gets excellent marks for quality, which has prepared the country's workforce to adopt the latest technologies for productivity enhancements."

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