Belgium business news 2025
February 2025Here are some of the key areas to watch, keeping in mind that the landscape can evolve:
1. Economic Outlook and Competitiveness:
- Focus on fiscal consolidation: Belgium is prioritizing fiscal consolidation to support disinflation, rebuild buffers, and address spending pressures.
This will likely involve rationalizing current spending while preserving public investment in key areas like infrastructure, healthcare, and education. - Enhancing growth potential: Reforms are needed to boost growth through higher labor force participation, increased productivity, and more efficient resource allocation.
This could involve tax and social benefit reforms, changes to wage-setting mechanisms, and skills upgrades.
- Maintaining macrofinancial stability: Belgium aims to maintain stability by preserving capital buffer requirements and prudential limits on mortgage loans.
Continued progress in systemic risk assessment, supervision, and crisis management is expected.
2. Labor Market and Social Policies:
- Increasing retirement age: The legal retirement age in Belgium has increased to 66 as of January 1, 2025, and will further rise to 67 in 2030.
This has implications for workforce planning and social security.
- Changes to indexation of remuneration: Several sectors have introduced new systems for indexing remuneration, with the most important being the new indexation in Joint Committee No.
100 for blue-collar workers. - Flexi-job income registration: Employers of flexi-job employees need to register the flexi-salary monthly, in addition to the quarterly DmfA-registration.
This allows employees to monitor their flexi-income and ensure they don't exceed the annual threshold. - Increase in foster parent and adoption leave: Employees taking adoption or foster parent leave are entitled to an individual credit of up to 6 weeks' leave, with an additional credit that can be divided among parents, increased to 4 weeks from January 1, 2025.
3. Tax Reforms and Investment:
Potential tax reforms: Tax reforms are being considered to shift part of the tax burden from labor to capital, without revenue loss, and to reduce tax exemptions.
This is because Belgium has the highest labor-tax wedge in the OECD.
Investment in innovation: The Belgian government plans to invest heavily in innovation to boost employment and economic growth.
This includes making the carry-over of unused investment deduction unlimited in time and without restrictions, with special attention to climate-friendly innovations.
R&D and innovation support: The government aims to strengthen R&D and innovation through various measures, including clarifying the payroll tax exemption for R&D employees and simplifying the "green" investment deduction.
4. Other Important Developments:
- Enforcement in the cleaning sector: The compulsory registration of workers' presence in the cleaning sector, which began in 2024, will be strictly enforced from January 1, 2025.
- Decrease in maximum student work hours: The temporary increase in maximum student work hours to 600 has ended, reverting to 475 hours.
Working beyond this threshold will be taxed as normal remuneration.
Belgium inflation 2023
June 2023There has been a further fall in the rate of inflation in Belgium.
Figures released on Thursday show that inflation here currently stands at 4.15%. At the end of May inflation in Belgium was 5.2%.
Most noticeable in the June inflation figures is that for the first time in many months the pace at which food prices are rising is slowing down.
(Source: vrt.be)
Belgium Credit Rating Downgrade
November 2011Standard & Poor's downgraded on November 25 Belgium's long term sovereign credit rating by one notch from AA+ to AA with a negative outlook for Belgium.
The downgrade may result in higher interest rates for future loans.
Belgium's downgrade follows other downgrades within two days of Hungary and Portugal.
Belgium Facing Downgrade by Standard and Poor's
December 2010Standard and Poor's, S&P, credit rating agency changed on December 14 the outlook for Belgium from stable to negative, mainly due to the unstable political situation.
Belgium which has a high debt to GDP ratio of around 100% is currently in an unstable political situation following the June 13 elections.
The agency warned that the current credit rating of AA+ could drop within the coming six months if failing to form a stable government.
A downgrade can affect the interest rates of government bonds bought by investors.
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