Belgium's industrial production shrank again in June, according to provisional figures published by Statbel, the country's statistics office, extending a run of soft readings for the country's factories and processing plants.
The seasonally adjusted production index fell 1.1 percent compared with May, while the calendar adjusted measure was down 2.8 percent from June of last year. Statbel cautioned that the June figures remain provisional and could be revised once fuller returns are in.
A wider revision, felt mostly in Brussels
The release came alongside a broader overhaul of how the index itself is built. Statbel reworked the underlying production series back to 2017 after identifying methodological problems in how different industries are weighted and chained together over time. The agency said the changes made little practical difference to the national totals or to the regional figures for Flanders and Wallonia, but had a more noticeable effect on the numbers for Brussels.
The index has used 2021 as its base year, set at 100, since January 2024. It is designed to track changes in the volume of value added at factor cost across industry, drawing on a mix of deflated production values, output volumes, deflated revenue, hours worked, and consumption of raw materials and energy.
The underlying data comes from Prodcom, a monthly survey coordinated across the European Union that covers manufacturing and mining activity, formally sections B and C of the EU's NACE Rev. 2 classification, with a handful of sub sectors excluded. Only businesses with at least 20 employees or annual turnover above 4.2 million euros are required to respond. Because collecting and processing those returns takes time, Statbel typically publishes results around 40 days after the month they cover.