Belgian November Business Confidence Falls to Lowest Since 1993

By Jurjen van de Pol

Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Belgian business confidence declined the lowest in more than 15 years in November, led by the manufacturing and building industries.

The confidence index for Belgium, the sixth-largest economy among the 15 countries that use the euro, fell to minus 23.7 this month from minus 14.8 in October, the Brussels-based National Bank of Belgium said today in an e-mailed statement. The index is now at its lowest since June 1993, the bank said.

Belgian companies face “declining exports and domestic demand as consumers also don’t have much confidence,” said Steven Vanneste, an economist at Fortis in Brussels. If “a further credit tightening occurs, producer confidence may go down further.”

Business sentiment in neighboring Germany, Europe’s largest economy, slumped to the lowest level in almost 16 years in November as the global financial crisis sapped demand for exports, data from the Munich-based Ifo institute showed today. The Belgian economy may be heading for the first recession in six years, central bank Governor Guy Quaden said last month.

“There was an exceptionally large drop in business confidence in the manufacturing industry,” the bank said in today’s report. “The decline was less pronounced in the building industry.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Jurjen van de Pol in Amsterdam jvandepol@bloomberg.net