Savannah Chamber

19 4 Similarly, the Mason Mega-Rail Terminal at the Port of Savannah will provide more frequent and faster rail services to Midwestern cities like Memphis, St. Louis, Chicago, and cities in the Ohio Valley. In 2020, the Georgia Port Authority put into operation the first nine of 18 new working tracks. When the project is complete, the Mason-Mega Rail Terminal will double the Port of Savannah's rail capacity and it will be the largest on-dock rail terminal at any port in North America. Many of the major distribution and logistics project announcements in 2020 will be building out in 2021. For example, Home Depot announced that it will open three new warehousing facilities, creating 1,000 jobs in the metro Atlanta area. Georgia is the hub for Home Depot's supply chain operations for the Southeast and the company will continue to benefit from homeowners heightened interest in home improvement projects. In 2020, Amazon announced two major projects, a fulfillment Center in Columbia County that will employ 88 and a fulfilment center in Coweta County that will employ 500. Hello Fresh announced plan to build a distribution center in Newnan that will employ 750. BANG ENERGY announced that it would locate its first Southeastern manufacturing and distribution facility in Lithia Springs, creating 600 jobs. Radial Inc. announced plans to build an e-commerce fulfillment center in Locust Grove, creating 344 jobs. In July 2020, Business Facilities Magazine ranked Georgia as the No. 1 state for motion picture and TV production. Prior to the pandemic, Georgia was on pace to have a record setting year in film production. Unfortunately, COVID-19 shut down virtually all film production for several months. After the pause, production activity resumed, but production in this air-travel dependent, relatively high-contact industry is unlikely to normalize until 2022. Since the Georgia Entertainment Industry Investment Act was signed into law in 2008, direct spending by the film industry has increased from $93 million in 2007 to $2.9 billion in FY 2019. In 2018, Georgia's film industry ranked third to California and New York in the production of all feature films – 2019 ranking were not available at the time of this writing. State incentives help to ensure that nearly all studio space is booked. The Georgia Film Academy helps to ensure that well-trained workers are available. Georgia's diversity of locations provides a good fit for a wide range of film and TV productions. Georgia is at the stage of development where new movie and film production increasingly begets additional movie and film production. As the professional, technical, and physical infrastructure becomes even more fully developed, the economic benefits of each dollar spent on film and television production in Georgia should generate larger economic impacts for our state's economy. Financial services is one of the most economically cyclical industries and COVID-19 was a major challenge to the industry. For example, the virus crisis caused many more people to become unemployed and miss payments on consumer loans and mortgages. Similarly, temporary and permanent business closures caused many businesses to miss payments on business loans. Banks responded by adding aggressively to their loan loss reserves. Large numbers of missed payments can lead to bank failures, but it will help that most banks were exceptionally well capitalized when the pandemic began. Compared to historical averages banks have a relatively low exposure to home loans, but a higher-than-average exposure to business loans. Due to a favorable combination of high levels of capitalization, aggressive and timely intervention by the by the Federal Reserve, and Congressional actions that helped mitigate financial risks relatively few bank failures are expected in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, at least relative to what occurred in Georgia in the wake of the Great Recession. As forbearance policies wind down in early 2021, additional credit problems almost certainly will emerge, however. The forecast that economic recovery continues through 2021 will help Georgia's financial institutions. Demographic trends such as above-average population growth will help Georgia's financial institutions. The upcycle in residential real estate will benefit financial institutions, but poor prospects for commercial real estate will hurt financial institutions. Similarly, rising home prices favor banks' top- and bottom-line growth, but declines in commercial property prices will hurt banks. The prospects for deposit growth are good, but an almost flat yield curve will limit financial institutions' ability to profit from borrowing short and lending long. Higher demand for many types of loans will support Georgia banks' profits. Households' credit scores are at decent levels and are not expected to deteriorate too much more assuming that double-dip recession is avoided. Higher consumer spending should ensure growth of non-revolving credit to households, but banks will tighten lending due to rising delinquencies. More major home renovation projects will cause the use of home equity loans to increase. More auto loans will add to the bottom line, but less mortgage refinancing will challenge the bottom line.

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