Belgians eat less and save more

An inquiry of Fedis, the Belgian federation of distribution, showed that one fifth of the Belgian consumers saved on his expenses of food.
The common Belgian saved 15% in the first six months of 2009 which is 2% more than last year.
Not only the food, where particularly the A-labels suffer and the discounts are more often bought, but also the non-food and the catering industry suffered under the anti consumerism of the Belgian population.
Fedis has calculated that there will be only 1000 new jobs in the distribution sector in 2009 against 4000 in 2008 so it advised traders to try to entice clients by investing in renovation and expansion which can have advantageous results on the employment.

Wolf Vandekerckhove

Reporting on Economy Was Narrow

An American study of financial news coverage this year found that only a few topics were extremely highlighted by the media while the economic troubles of ordinary people were ignored.
It discovered that in February and March, almost 50% of all news articles discussed the financial crisis and three-quarters of those reports originated from Washington or New York.
The researchers of the particular research center claim that newspapers and other media should not have forgotten that they were talking about something that affected almost every American.
The researchers also discovered that Obama’s phrases about the economy were repeated most; an example:” the weight of this crisis will not determine the destiny of this nation.”

Philippe Peelman

ING banking and insurance activities might be split

The banking and insurance activities of ING might be split into two seperate companies. Nick Jue, co-chairman of ING Retail Netherlands, declared this last friday at a congres in Groningen. Jue said this in an answer to a question concerning the future of banking and insurance. The chairman pointed to the complexity of the two activities and preservation of core buisiness as a reason.

Nick Van Beversluys

Was massive government stimulus in the banking sector useless?

However governments have ploughed so much money in their economies to encourage banks to start lending again... it is getting harder for small and medium sized enterprises to get a loan.
If governments want their economies to recover; businesses, individuals and investors have to be able to borrow the necessary amounts of money to buy goods and stimulate demand. Despite the fact that local governments have spent billions of euros to make loans easier to secure, the European Central Bank's survey found that 33% of small and medium sized businesses had got serious problems with getting access to loans from banks.
So isn't it time for the Eurozone governments to rephrase their objectives and to find out what the banking sector is doing with their "well-spent" money?

Charlyne Vagenende

Ace group is last hope for milk sector

After weeks of protests across Europe, with farmers dumping milk stocks and withholding supplies, 27 agriculture ministers met to discuss low milk prices.
Farmers say their current production costs are more than twice the price they get for their milk, moreover there’s the fact that while farmers have seen the prices they receive for their milk decline by 40%, prices in the shops have only fallen between 1% and 2%.
For that reason the agriculture ministers decided that next week an European ace group of high level will meet concerning the future of the European milk sector.
The eventual intention is that the milk producers as of now will discuss with the processing industry and the distribution sector about prices with as head aim reach a better balance between supply and demand.

Lena Tanghe

Questions around world poverty guru

The questions around the most popular banker in the world, Muhammad Yunus, have raised after a pair of academic studies. This world poverty guru had become popular by his system of microlending, which has improved the life of many poor women in Bangladesh. But a bunch of people don't use the money they get to set up businesses; they use it to buy all sorts of things, like televisions. The hype around Mr. Yunus declines and a lot of people think that the system of microlending has to be modernised.

David Van Boxstael

Belgium, 17th most developed country in the world

Belgium is the 17th most developed country in the world according to the Human Development Index (HDI). Our country is one of the countries where human development is best guaranteed, but this could change. We had one of the slowest growth rates of the developed countries, an alarming fact according to Marc Destanne de Bernis UNDP council donor in Brussels. Because of the demographic ageing our population isn’t growing fast the Belgian population is growing a little faster thanks to the affluent immigration.


Seffers Raphaël