Corporate finance in Belgium - statistics & facts
How do Belgian entrepreneurs finance their future investments? For years, bank credit was an important source for the company plans, especially for SMEs (companies which have between 10 and 249 employees). In 2020, for example, these small and medium enterprises accounted for more than half of all bank loans to non-financial companies, a figure higher than bank loans towards large enterprises or micro-enterprises. Nonetheless, bank loans became more difficult to get a hold of. Much like in neighboring countries Luxembourg and the Netherlands, business executives deemed Belgium a country where it could be difficult to obtain bank funding, ranking it with 4.5 on a scale from one to seven in a 2019-survey. Indeed, one out of three SMEs in Belgium said in 2019 that bank loans were a funding source "irrelevant to their enterprise", instead opting for alternative finance methods.
