General economy

Belgium is in long time registered in a business tradition. The narrowness of its border forces Belgium to be open on the world, so much so that its exports and its imports per inhabitant place the country in the first row, Belgium is world leader. Its economic activities are of course linked to the fluctuations of nearly countries.

Here as elsewhere, the structure of its activities has been deeply modified. Indeed, during the last 30 years, Belgium has became strongly desindustrialized, when as the same time, the tertiary sector soared. The regional and local distribution of the activities experienced important transformation too. All these changes are not without links with the problem of unemployment and of stabilization of the public finances.

An international economy  

The propensity for the international business can be explained by the geographical situation of Belgium and by the narrowness of its internal market. The health of its economy depends also appreciably on the ones of the other industriazed countries and in particular the ones  which are the closest countries. Thus, two thirds of the first hundred companies depend today on foreign decision makers. Such a situation raises the problem of a lack of autonomy of these companies as regards their parent company, with the advantages and disavantages that it involves.

Desindustrialization and development of the service sector

The drop of the employments in the agricultural field from 1970 to 1995 is important. It's still more important in the manufacturing sector. But this employment's reduction in the industrial field was compensated for the important service sector. This adaptation enormously modified the labour world favour of the female employments and the small companies.

Two major problems: unemployment and public deficit

Although it knex a recent improvment, the unemployment's rate stays relatively high. Like in other countries, the percentage changes strongly according to the sex and the region. It concerns more women and strikes rather in Wallonia and Brussels than in Flanders. The unemployment's causes are, like everywhere numerous. It can be explained by the decline if some fields, the growth of potentially working population, the development of the female workn the growth of productivity, the importance of the payroll charges and the labour cost, ect.

The public deficit is an other major problem of Belgium. Very high until 1993, its began to decrease following draconian stablization of the budget and the balanced budget was reached in 2002. Combined with the budgetary restriction, an efficient management of the national debt allowed an important reduction of the debt's load. These two positive evolution were crucial because it determined Belgium's entry in the "Euro's Club".

Source: SPF Foreign Affaires, Foreign Trade and Cooperation for development.
www.diplomatie.be.

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