Belgian business and economy, in English

Belgium indexes wages to inflation automatically. When the health index passes a threshold, pay rises — by law or by sector agreement, without anyone negotiating it. That single feature drives an enormous amount of the country's business reporting: it protects purchasing power, it raises employers' costs against neighbouring countries, and every inflation print is therefore also a story about competitiveness and about the wage-norm law that caps what can be agreed on top.

The rest of the economy is smaller than its output suggests and very open. Antwerp's port and the chemical cluster around it, pharmaceuticals and biotech from Leuven and Ghent, and a financial and lobbying layer in Brussels that exists because the EU institutions do. An export-heavy economy of eleven million people means a German slowdown or a Rotterdam capacity decision is domestic news here.

We summarise the Belgian business press — company results, restructurings and closures, the labour market, energy prices, the federal budget — to 60 words in English. Numbers with the period they cover and the source that published them.

Nothing here is investment advice, and nothing is sponsored. If a story is a company's own announcement, it is described as one.