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VARIABLE INTEREST ENTITIES

12 Months Ended

Dec. 31, 2020

VARIABLE INTEREST ENTITIES

VARIABLE INTEREST ENTITIES

10. VARIABLE INTEREST ENTITIES

Since 2016, the Company, through its wholly-owned subsidiary, CSE Japan Investment Company Limited, entered into silent partnership agreements with various Japan project companies, to securitize project finance bonds and other type of project assets. Under the silent partnership agreements, the project entities are considered VIEs in which the Company has no equity interests, but is entitled to substantially all of the economic interests of the projects. In addition, the Company has the power to make decisions over the activities that most significantly impact the economic performance of the projects under the asset management agreement signed simultaneously between the project companies and a wholly-owned subsidiary, Canadian Solar Project K.K. As such, the Company concluded it was the primary beneficiary of the project companies and thus these project companies were accounted for as consolidated VIEs since their establishment.

As of December 31, 2019 and 2020, the carrying amounts and classifications of the consolidated VIEs’ major assets and liabilities with immaterial items combined, excluding intercompany balances which are eliminated upon consolidation, included in the Company’s consolidated balance sheets are as follows:

​

​	​	​	​	​
​		At December 31,		At December 31,
​	​	2019	​	2020
​	​	$	​	$
Cash	​	14,011	​	42,064
Project assets	​	197,366	​	337,836
Other assets	​	12,091	​	79,580
Total assets	​	223,468	​	459,480
​	​	​	​	​
Short-term borrowings	​	139,708	​	180,773
Long-term borrowings	​	—	​	52,408
Other liabilities	​	66,569	​	60,845
Total liabilities	​	206,277	​	294,026

​

Net income and overall cash flow activities during the year are immaterial to the consolidated financial statements.

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- Definition

The entire disclosure for a variable interest entity (VIE), including but not limited to, judgments and assumptions in determining whether to consolidate and in identifying the primary beneficiary, gain (loss) recognized on the initial consolidation of the VIE, terms of arrangements, amounts and classification of the VIE's assets and liabilities, and the entity's maximum exposure to loss.

+ References

Reference 1: http://fasb.org/us-gaap/role/ref/legacyRef
-Publisher FASB
-Name Accounting Standards Codification
-Topic 810
-URI http://asc.fasb.org/topic&trid=2197479

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- References

No definition available.

+ Details

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