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Halifax’s $25-billion naval shipyard contract will single-handedly transform Nova Scotia’s economy into one of the strongest in Canada by 2013, a TD Bank Group economist predicts.

The bank had been expecting the economy to limp along during the next two years. But since the awarding of the shipyard contract, TD is far more optimistic about Nova Scotia’s prospects. So much so that its economics department has taken the unusual step of updating its prognosis for the provincial economy.

“This contract has the potential to offer a better standard of living and more long-term stability for the province,” TD economist Sonya Gulati said Monday.

Gulati predicts the provincial economy will grow by 2.6 per cent in 2013, which is 0.5 per cent more than originally expected.

By the bank’s reckoning, that should leave Nova Scotia — previously dead last in terms of expected GDP growth in 2013 — tied with Newfoundland and Labrador as the fourth-best-performing economy in the land. (Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario are expected to lead the country.)

Halifax Regional Municipality, which is forecast to grow by 3.2 per cent in 2013, will do even better than the province.

The shipbuilding job bonanza is already slowly starting. The Irving family-owned Halifax Shipyard has received 2,000 applications since the contract was awarded on Oct. 19.

So far, the yard has hired 50 people, most of them electricians. But at peak, Irving spokeswoman Mary Keith says, 1,000 of the 2,700 people expected to be working at the shipyard should be in white-collar sectors like IT, engineering and finance.

Those numbers don’t surprise TD’s Gulati. She expects the impact of the shipyard contract to ripple through most sectors of the Nova Scotia economy. Under the federal government’s Industrial and Regional Benefits policy for procurement contracts, a substantial amount of the work must go to small- and medium-sized enterprises, which make up the lion’s share of the provincial economy.

She also thinks benefits will spread far beyond the boundaries of the Halifax region. The reason: some 70 per cent of Nova Scotia’s manufacturing companies are located outside Halifax. The same is true of roughly 40 per cent of the province’s research and development, engineering and technical consulting firms.

That’s music to the ears of Bert Lewis, business development manager of Mulgrave Machine Works Ltd. in Mulgrave.

“Our expectation is that there will be such a volume of work that one yard will not be able to handle it,” said Lewis, whose custom metal fabrication company hopes to design and fabricate pressure vessels and tanks for the shipyard contract.

“We are ready, willing and able to support that initiative and look forward to being part of it.”