April 14 (Bloomberg) -- Canada's dollar appreciated to the strongest level in 22 months versus its U.S. counterpart as a rise in global stocks and commodities burnished the appeal of currencies tied to growth. The Canadian dollar strengthened past parity with the greenback for the first time this week. It has gained 5.5 percent this year for the second-best performance versus the U.S. dollar among its 16 most-traded counterparts, after Mexico's peso. An accelerating economic recovery and speculation the Bank of Canada will raise borrowing costs before the Federal Reserve have fueled its rise. "People are adding to their long Canadian dollar positions," said Firas Askari, head currency trader in Toronto at Bank of Montreal, Canada's fourth-largest lender. "It's a continued good-news Canadian dollar story." A long position is a bet a currency will gain. Canada's currency, nicknamed the loonie for the image of the aquatic bird on the C$1 coin, appreciated 0.2 percent to 99.89 Canadian cents per U.S. dollar at 9:50 a.m. in Toronto, from C$1.0011 yesterday. It touched 99.62 cents, the strongest level since June 2. One Canadian dollar buys $1.0015. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose 0.5 percent, and the MSCI World Index, a measure of stocks in 23 developed markets, gained 0.7 percent. Crude Rises Crude oil for May delivery increased as much as 1.2 percent to $85.07 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, snapping a five-day losing string of declines. The correlation between crude, Canada's biggest export, and the loonie is about 84 percent, according to Bloomberg data. A correlation of 100 percent would indicate the instruments move in lock step. The central bank meets April 20 to decide on interest rates. Governor Mark Carney has pledged to leave the key rate at a record low 0.25 percent through June depending on inflation. Six-month overnight index swap rates, a measure of the average overnight interest rate expected by investors during that time, climbed to 0.576 percent today, the highest level since February 2009, from 0.5525 yesterday. The rise indicates traders are raising bets on borrowing-cost increases. There's been a "spike in interest" in buying the U.S. dollar versus the Canadian among corporate accounts that use the greenback to hedge, according to John Curran, a senior vice president at CanadianForex Ltd. "If you need to buy dollar-Canada, how can you not be happy with the Canadian dollar above par?" Curran said in a phone interview from Toronto, referring to the U.S. dollar- Canadian dollar currency pair. The Canadian dollar has averaged about C$1.31 per U.S. dollar over the past 20 years. Sales Growth The Bank of Canada's quarterly Business Outlook Survey, released April 12, showed 64 percent of executives said sales growth will quicken over the next year, while another 20 percent expect sales to slow. Forty-five percent of companies said they will charge more for their products, and 17 percent predicted slower price gains. The so-called balance of opinion was 28 percent, the highest level since the question was first asked in 1998. The central bank today sells C$3.5 billion ($3.5 billion) in bonds maturing in December 2015. The previous auction of five-year bonds on March 3 had an average yield of 2.745 percent with a bid-to-cover ratio of 2.6 times. The results of the auction will be available on the central bank's Web site around noon, Ottawa time.

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