April 2021
Survey of Corporate Attitudes towards Capital Investment for 2021
58.0% of companies have a capital investment plan, up from last year
— Companies making capital investments for decarbonization remained below 10% —
Introduction
While uncertainty about the outlook for domestic and overseas economies cannot be dispelled due to the impact of COVID-19, etc., digitalization in anticipation of labor saving and efficiency, and response to the global environment, etc., are expected to be positive factors in capital investment trends. The government also continues to pursue capital investment support, etc., as subsidy programs to counter COVID-19, and actively promotes capital investment policies such as creation of a tax system to encourage investment in digital transformation (DX), and for decarbonization in “Tax Reform Outline for 2021”.
Therefore, Teikoku Databank has conducted a survey of corporate attitudes towards capital investment plans, etc., for 2021. This survey was conducted in conjunction with the April 2021 TDB Trends Research.
*Survey period: April 16 – 30, 2021: Companies Surveyed: 23,707; Valid Responses: 11,003 (Response Rate: 46.4%) .
*The survey of capital investment has been conducted every April since April 2017, and this is the 5th such survey.
*Details of this survey can be found on the dedicated Economic Trend Survey website (http://www.tdb-di.com).
Primary points of survey results(summary)
- 1 Companies responding that they “have” plans to make capital investments in 2021 increased by 5.2 points from that in the previous survey (April 2020, 52.8%), to 58.0%. By size, all size companies responding they have plans increased from last year. Large companies in particular increased substantially. By industry, “manufacturing” ranked top at 70.1%, with the largest increase from that in the previous survey (an increase of 9.2 points from that in the previous survey).
- 2 With respect to capital investment details, “replacement of equipment” was top (41.0%), followed by “maintenance and repair of existing equipment” (33.2%), “informatization-related (IT investments)” (30.3%), and “labor saving/rationalization” (27.8%). Some companies expressed the opinion that they aggressively make capital investments through special loans under the COVID-19 crisis, while quite a few companies said they have made no progress in capital investment, considering future repayments.
- 3 With respect to the main funding methods, “own resources” accounted for the highest percentage at 43.2%. Long-term and short-term borrowing from financial institutions stood at over 30%. Own resources and borrowing from financial institutions account for a large portion of corporate funding. The amount to be spent on capital investment averaged 125.72 million yen.
- 4 Reasons for not making capital investments included, “the future cannot be foreseen” (55.0%) remaining at the top, even though it decreased by 9.4 points from that in the previous survey, followed by “equipment in its current state is at the appropriate level”, a substantial increase (32.6%, an increase of 7.3 points from that in the previous survey). SMEs had higher percentages of “the burden of borrowing is large”, and “cash on hand is small” than did the large companies, and the results show that SMEs refrain from making capital investments due to financial concerns.