ATB Financial has released a bit of a "gloomy" economic forecast for the Province.

That from ATB Director of Insight, Rob Roach, who says while it looks like 2019 will be a tough year for Alberta, the ag sector shows resilience.

"From what we're hearing even though there's going to be some challenges, overall agriculture should preform relatively well, and the agri-food sector, the food processing side of that, has been doing well and should continue to have a good year in 2019."

Roach points to challenges facing the agriculture sector such as drought and the Chinese ban on canola.

ATB says Cannabis and other niche crops are also creating new opportunities.

In their outlook report, ATB forecasts 0.7 per cent real GDP growth for the province this year.

"That's quite a low level of economic growth for Alberta," Roach said. "It's even lower than our forecast earlier in the year which was 1.4 per cent, which was already modest."

Roach adds the big story is without the pipeline capacity to get more oil to market, there's no room to expand the Province's oil industry.

He says this will bleed into the labour market, making a tough year for unemployment.

To read the full report, you can visit their website.

 

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