D. Tighe
Research expert covering consumer behavior, sporting goods retail, and the global toy industry.
Retail trade in Belgium - statistics & facts
Lodged between France, Germany, and the Netherlands, while also officially speaking these countries’ languages, Belgium is a small country with a stable economy and retail industry. Over the past decade, sales numbers of the entire wholesale and retail trade within the country had developed positively, ultimately reaching an estimated annual turnover of roughly 620 billion euros in 2022. This was a considerable jump compared to previous years. In 2020, overall turnover had noticeably declined, likely due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although sales had shot up in 2022, the number of wholesale and retail trade enterprises active on the Belgian market has dropped remarkably over the past few years.
From 2025 on, inflation rates in Belgium are projected to stabilize, remaining at a consistent and usual two percent per year.
International trade
At the end of 2023, Belgium’s international merchandise trade balance amounted to roughly 15 billion euros, indicating that the country exported more goods than it imported. That year, Belgium exported approximately 520 billion euros’ worth of goods, while its yearly import value amounted to some 505 billion euros. Both imports and exports decreased in 2023 compared to 2022. Unsurprisingly, some of Belgium’s favorite trading partners included nearby European countries.Rising prices for consumers
If 2013 is taken as a reference year for consumer prices and used to see how these have evolved since, the cost of a weighted average basket of goods and services purchased by a Belgian household has increased by over 30 percent in 2024. In other words, the average price of products and services has gotten significantly more expensive compared to 11 years earlier. In the last few decades, inflation spiked the hardest in 2022, when it reached nearly 10 percent overall in Belgium. That said, the country's highest annual inflation rate was recorded all the way back in 1927, at more than 25 percent.From 2025 on, inflation rates in Belgium are projected to stabilize, remaining at a consistent and usual two percent per year.
