This week, “Trends-Tendances” publishes its Top 5000, supplement which offers a scan of the economic development of our country.
Two lockdowns were enough to cause an unprecedented drop in activity since the end of World War II. In 2020, our GDP fell by 5.7% compared to the previous year, almost three times more than during the economic and financial crisis of 2009! The temporary closure of shops as well as the more lasting closure of places of relaxation led to a decline in private consumption of 8.2%. The loss of turnover …
Two lockdowns were enough to cause an unprecedented drop in activity since the end of World War II. In 2020, our GDP fell by 5.7% compared to the previous year, almost three times more than during the economic and financial crisis of 2009! The temporary closure of shops as well as the more lasting closure of places of relaxation led to a decline in private consumption of 8.2%. The resulting loss of turnover led to a cautious freeze on business investment, which fell by 7%. Private consumption and corporate investment alone providing nearly two-thirds of our GDP, collective impoverishment has been enormous. The National Bank estimates the cumulative loss of income of individuals, businesses and public authorities at 41 billion. Almost 1.4 million workers received at least one allowance for temporary unemployment during the year 2020. Some 3.4 billion were allocated to the self-employed who were forced to stop or suspend their activity and support measures for workers. companies have proven to be so successful that, falling from 10,598 in 2019 to 7,203 in 2020, the number of bankruptcies has been reduced by a third. This massive recourse to temporary unemployment has made it possible to preserve employment, which has remained stable from one year to the next. All these efforts not being free, our deficit plunged to 9.1%, the highest level since the 1980s, and propelled our debt ratio to 112.8% of GDP, an amount that we have seen. had not reached since the turn of the century. Hence the question, still unresolved to this day: who will pay? Globally, the industrial and commercial companies of our Top recorded a turnover of 690 billion in 2020, a decrease of 60 billion euros. At least half of this decline is attributable to Covid. The rest is due to other factors, one of which is the decrease in average crude oil prices by about a third. Profits were almost halved, falling from 39.8 billion to 20.7 billion euros. Certainly, the law of large numbers has played a role. Nevertheless, in total, 45% of the companies in our Top saw their net profit decline and 52%, their turnover decline.
– .
