Brussels bomb attacks are a shock to the economy

Brussels’ hotels and restaurants had barely recovered from the November 2015 attacks in Paris, which killed 130 people, and made Belgian authorities put the entire city on a lockdown for weeks, when Brussels itself saw two bomb attacks on 22 March 2016, killing 31 people and injuring 270.

The consequences are dire: shops closed; people are staying at home avoiding pubs and restaurants. Worse still, tourists are cancelling their trips to Brussels. The airport, badly hit by an explosion, is a quiet affair these days.

Travel agencies are already feeling the pinch. Hotel bookings declined sharply during the following Easter holidays. Yvan Roque, President of the Brussels Horeca Association, said in April 2016 that restaurants and cafes ran at half speed. Between January and March 2016 around 600 on-trade outlets filed for bankruptcy. Usually, in such a volatile sector, it’s 40 closures per month.

Brussels’ restaurateurs are also unhappy with the new pedestrian zone in the city’s centre, introduced last summer. It is not only an ugly affair (trust my words, I saw it), but it is keeping punters away who don't feel safe there in the evenings.

In protest, the mayor of Brussels, Yvan Mayeur, in April 2016 was refused a meal at a restaurant because the chef is unhappy about the impact the pedestrian zone is having on takings. Melanie Englebin, the chef of the Cécila restaurant, said that she noticed a spectacular fall in turnover after the introduction of the pedestrian zone.

“I asked him to leave in a friendly way. I provided him with an explanation: the pedestrian zone means my turnover has fallen by 40 percent. I'm nearly bankrupt,” Ms Englebin told media.

No doubt, the attacks and the terrorist threat are a major blow to tourism, which represents about 8 percent of all Brussels jobs and nearly 4 percent of regional GDP. To make matters worse, the shock waves have hit the economy hard and the consequences will be felt for months.

Beer sales are an obvious indicator. During the first quarter this year, Belgium’s beer sales dropped 5.2 percent year-on-year. In the on-trade, draught beer sales declined over 9 percent, a sure marker that people are not going out much these days, especially in Brussels, where draught beer sales are down almost twice the national average.

Without mentioning the attacks, AB-InBev, when reporting its First Quarter 2016 results on 4 May 2016, merely said that its own beer volumes in Belgium “were down mid-single digits, due to a soft industry and some estimated market share losses.”

A “soft industry”? What an unsuitable euphemism.