EQUIPMENT FINANCE
Canadian Business Prepares for the Post-COVID Boom C
anadian Western Bank’s Guy Miller has advice for how Canadian equipment companies can restart or expand operations to take advantage of future opportunities. When COVID-19 forced Canada’s economy into lockdown, consumers were not the only ones who reduced their spending. Businesses did, too. In fact, Statistics Canada has estimated that non-residential capital and repair expenditures — an indicator of how much businesses are spending to buy and maintain machinery and other equipment — fell by nearly 10 percent in 2020 from 2019 levels, and that the decline was much steeper in certain sectors, like in construction. According to Guy Miller, VP, Direct Sales at CWB Equipment Financing, there were two reasons for the falloff. “In part it was because of lack of inventory, as factories locked down,” Miller explains. “But it was also in part because of lack of demand, as businesses trimmed capex (capital expenditure) in response to economic conditions.” This year, however, the landscape changed. While the pandemic is certainly not over, an end is in sight, and the global economy, including Canada’s, is poised to reopen. That will undoubtedly allow many Canadian firms to restart or expand operations to take advantage of a
FALL 2021
TOTAL FINANCE
23
