Government must continue reforming and cutting costs

Following the European Commission and the IMF The International Monetary Fund (IMF), established in 1945, focuses on monetary issues. The global organisation is governed by and accountable to the 188 member countries. In addition to financial stability, monetary cooperation and international trade, the IMF promotes and supports employment, sustainable economic growth and combating poverty. In this regard, it provides loans, technical assistance, specialised training courses and advice to governments. It also monitors financial trends. IMF , the OECD and the Belgian Federal Planning Bureau The Federal Planning Bureau (FPB) is a Belgian public agency which carries out studies and projections about economic, socio-economic and ecological policy issues. Its scientific expertise is at the disposal of the Government, Parliament, the social partners and the national and international institutions. Federal Planning Bureau , the National Bank of Belgium ( NBB The National Bank of Belgium (NBB) is the Belgian central bank. Since the introduction of the euro, the NBB is one of the participants in the euro system, in which the European Central Bank, with headquarters in Frankfurt, plays a central role. The National Bank of Belgium is currently a public limited company. Half of the shares belong to the Belgian State. NBB ) is now also expecting to achieve higher economic growth in this and in the coming years: 1.6% to be precise. By way of comparison, this growth was 1.2% last year. All these institutions are also praising the reforms that have led to more jobs and more purchasing power. Nevertheless, the budget, with a deficit of billions of euros, remains a cause for concern. “We must therefore continue to prune expenditure and we must keep the reform train moving full steam ahead,” the N-VA says.

The OECD explicitly praised the tax cuts in the tax shift of 8 billion euros as a driving force for jobs and purchasing power. The NBB in any case is seeing the real disposable income of families increase this year by 1.5% and by 2.3% and 2.2% in the years to come. Altogether that makes 6%, on top of price increases stemming from Inflation The increase in the general price level. The original meaning (literally “to blow up”) is monetary inflation, which means that the amount of money increases. Today, inflation primarily refers to price inflation. This means an implicit monetary depreciation. This causes the purchasing power to drop. inflation . “By making work pay, we fulfil one of our most important election promises,” the N-VA says. Together with the increased flexibility of the labour market, that tax shift has resulted, according to the NBB, in more than 200,000 net additional jobs during this legislative period: “a phenomenal performance from a historical perspective,” the party emphasises. Things will reach their full cruising speed in the next few years, with an additional reduction in personal income tax.

Budget deficit remains a challenge

The biggest challenge remains the budget deficit. As has been the case in recent years, the extra expenditure for pensions and other Social security Social security is currently managed at the Federal level in Belgium. The most important pillars of Belgian social security are: sickness and invalidity insurance (NIDHI), pensions, unemployment insurance and child allowances. In addition, occupational illness, occupational accidents and annual holidays are dealt with at this level. Some Flemish parties have been campaigning for years for (large parts of) social security to be transferred to the Regions and Communities. social security systems has had major knock-on effects. “We must seize the momentum of accelerating growth with both hands and not derail it with new taxes. At the same time, we have to continue with reforms, among other things to social security, to avoid overburdening future generations. The negligence of previous governments allowed pension expenditure to get completely out of hand and increase over the past five years by 8 billion euros to some 10% of our GDP The gross domestic product (GDP) is the total monetary value of all goods and services produced within a country, both by companies and the government. This term is usually used as a benchmark for a country’s prosperity. This is why the N-VA closely follows the evolution of the Belgian GDP. GDP . This government’s pension reform has cut extra invoices on the horizon in half. This is how we have to keep going, for the entire social security system,” the N-VA concludes.