TRANSPORT & VAN in Belgium

What should we remember from the past months? For the optimists, it is emphatically the latest forecasts from the OECD, clearly much better than expected. Despite the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis, the runaway economy and, in a way, the pandemic, Europe is showing unprecedented resilience. Even to the extent that the prospect of stagnation is disappearing, making way for growth of 1% in 2023, albeit timid, but more pronounced in 2024 (1.7%). These are good prospects, no doubt about it.

So much for the clearest side of the analysis. Let us now turn to the more somber side, because how could we not be worried when we check the latest statistics from Statbel on the number of bankruptcies in the transport sector in particular? We can see that in the first four months of the year, 228 companies in the sector have already thrown in the towel. This represents 40% more bankruptcies than the average for the period 2015-2019, i.e. before the crisis linked to the coronavirus. These bankruptcies caused a loss of 1,000 jobs from January to April, for an average of 1,300 in a completely 'normal' year... On the other hand, we must not lose sight of the fact that a large number of these bankruptcies concern small structures active in the delivery of parcels. They are often young companies with insufficient capital and often poorly managed. For many of these companies created during the e-commerce boom in 2020-2021, the death knell is now ringing. That aside, the negative impact of our wage handicap compared to our neighbouring countries remains a clear problem. This is further accentuated by the most recent automatic wage indexation, which according to Benny Smets, chairman of Transport & Logistics Belgium, may be evaluated at 5%. When we know the limited margins of the sector, that unfortunately explains a lot …