The Canadian Press<\/i>
Canadian firms are feeling more confident that the economic recovery is taking hold and say they are stepping up plans to hire more workers and invest, the Bank of Canada said Monday.
The central bank\u2019s quarterly survey of business and credit conditions are generally encouraging and point to improving conditions across the board.
But the firms are still saying that the economy is far from returning to the strength that existed before the recession hit in the late summer and early fall of 2008.
\u201cThe results of the winter survey provide some evidence that confidence in the recovery is growing,\u201d the bank said in an analysis posted on its website Monday morning.
\u201cWhile the balance of opinion on future sales is little changes, and respondents still expect the recovery to be gradual, more firms are planning to increase investment spending and employment than in the previous two surveys.\u201d
In a separate survey of senior loan officers, the central bank said lending conditions to firms have stabilized after almost two years when the balance of opinion reflected a tightening trend.
\u201cThese improved conditions are consistent with borrowers\u2019 increased access to financing in capital markets during recent quarters, and can also be attributed to the outlook for this segment being seen as favourable by survey respondents,\u201d the bank said.
The two surveys were conducted in late November and early December and are used by the central bank in its outlook for the economy and in setting interest policy.
While the surveys point to improving conditions, it is unlikely the results are strong enough to move the bank off its conditional commitment to keep interest rates as low as possible until at least this summer. The bank\u2019s next policy announcement will be issued next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Loans more readily available, Bank of Canada says<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2312,2313],"tags":[2905,2395,3420],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280696"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280696\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280696"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=280696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}