Canadian Finance Minister Joe Oliver said today that the U.S. is heading toward a “reasonably solid� economic expansion while he sees some concern about China. Oliver, 74, became finance minister in March, replacing Jim Flaherty, who died weeks later. The U.S. is starting to move “on the road to reasonably solid recovery,� Oliver said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in London. “When we look at China, some of the very recent results are pretty positive, but there is a bit of a concern that things may not be quite as robust as they have been.� The finance minister also said that “slow growth is definitely a concern particularly here in Europe,� and that he expects his country’s inflation rate to be “in the 2 percent target that was set by the Bank of Canada.� Inflation exceeded the Bank of Canada’s target last month for the first time in more than two years, an unexpected acceleration led by energy costs that sparked increases in the currency and bond yields. The consumer price index rose 2.3 percent in May from a year ago following April’s 2 percent pace, Statistics Canada said June 20 from Ottawa. The core rate, which excludes eight volatile products, increased 1.7 percent after a gain of 1.4 percent the prior month. Both increases were higher than all forecasts in Bloomberg economist surveys that called for total inflation of 2 percent and core prices to rise 1.5 percent. To contact the reporters on this story: Paul Badertscher in Ottawa at pbadertscher@bloomberg.net; Kevin Costelloe in Washington at kcostelloe@bloomberg.net; Scott Hamilton in London at shamilton8@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chris Wellisz at cwellisz@bloomberg.net Kevin Costelloe, Dan Liefgreen

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