The release of Statistics Canada's annual Public and Private Investment survey indicates that capital investment in BC is poised to edge higher in 2013. In aggregate, businesses and government plan on investing $46.9 billion on new residential and non-residential structures, industrial sites, drilling activity, machinery and equipment and all other new capital outlays this year. This represents an increase of 0.9% over 2012. Looking at only the non-residential segment, planned investment is slated to fall slightly (by 0.4%) this year. Despite the slumping housing market, BC developers who responded to the survey reported that they intend to boost residential investment spending by 3.6% this year. There is probably some downside risk to this projection given the ongoing slowdown in housing market activity.
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