© MARC HERREMANS – MEDIA HOUSE
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The sharp rise in energy prices is costing the Belgian economy some 10 billion euros. That says Pierre Wunsch, the governor of the National Bank, in De Tijd on Saturday. He braces himself for wildly fluctuating energy prices and accompanying inflation.
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jvhSource: BELGIAN
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The Russian invasion of neighboring Ukraine on Thursday immediately pushed gas and oil prices up sharply. There was a drop on Friday, but energy prices remain at a high level.
“The energy shock amounts to impoverishment for the European economy, according to initial estimates about 2.5 percent of gross domestic product,” Wunsch quotes an unpublished study by the European Central Bank, where he is a director. For the eurozone, that is 300 billion euros. For Belgium, the impoverishment amounts to about 10 billion euros.
Wunsch makes the link with the transition to sustainable energy in the coming decades. “Today’s energy shock has just as much impact as that of the energy transition, with the difference that the latter will be spread over 30 years instead of over three months’, says Wunsch.
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