by MorinvilleNews.com Staff
Confidence in the state of business over the next 12 months saw a 6.1 per cent increase to 54.9 per cent among Canadian small business owners in February. Those numbers are from the latest Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) Business Barometer, which the business advocacy group says has been on a steady rise since November 2023.
The Barometer survey shows that small businesses’ average price (2.8%) and wage (2.5%) plans over the next year and continuing downward to historic averages.
But the survey is not all good news. CFIB says the “restrictive monetary policy” by the Bank of Canada still negatively impacts small businesses. forty-eight per cent of businesses reported borrowing challenges and nearly half (49%) of survey respondents also reported struggling with insufficient consumer demand, numbers that are near historic highs.
“This February, the CFIB Business Barometer is showing business owners are seeing some hope on the horizon for the next 12 months. However, they’re not out of the woods yet with a Canadian economy in clear deceleration mode, and it will still take a few more months, and probably a few interest rate cuts, before a lot of them are finally able to grow and fully recover,” said Simon Gaudreault, CFIB’s chief economist and vice-president of research in a media release on Thursday.
