Retail trade

NACE 47526 · division 47 Retail trade

Current registrations 161division 47: 115,393

Starters, 12 months 10,261division 47 · 8.9 per 100 · Belgium 7.5

Bankruptcies, 5 years 31.86% of the registrations · Belgium 1.61%

Employment (FTE) 239,612division 47 · financial year 2025

Median age 9.5 yearsdivision 47 · Belgium 10.7 years

Filed accounts of the division

NACE division 47 · financial year 2025 · 46,601 filed annual accounts

Median solvency

35.1%

Belgium 46.2%

Median net result

€11,311

Belgium €16,554

Median equity

€98,837

Belgium €98,547

Loss-making

29.5%

Belgium 26.7%

Negative equity

16.9%

Belgium 12.4%

Median return on equity

12.3%

Belgium 15.9%

Median liquidity

1.48

Belgium 1.66

Staff cost per FTE in NACE division 47

11,340 employers

Median

€49,800

Belgium €61,400

Middle half

€39,600 to €63,800

half of the employers lie between

Place among sectors

73 of 78

sectors with a median staff cost per FTE, highest first

By size class
Size	Median	Middle half	Employers
fewer than 10 FTE	€50,500	€39,700 to €64,200	8,077
10 to 49 FTE	€46,400	€38,700 to €60,900	2,865
50 to 249 FTE	€57,600	€45,000 to €72,100	320
250 FTE or more	€58,400	€47,500 to €70,900	78

Employers with the highest staff cost per FTE in this division All sectors by staff cost In the Analysis workbench

Bankruptcies

Bankruptcies, 12 months

970

division 47 · 8.4 per 1,000 registrations · Belgium 5.5

Recent bankruptcies

Date	Company
24-11-2025	De Verfbeurs BE 0835.194.150
29-10-2025	DE VERFCENTRALE BE 0801.195.947
28-10-2025	DE VERFKIOSK BE 0783.828.294

Every bankruptcy in division 47, last 90 days

Running bankruptcies in the sector

NACE division 47

Number

2,274

Half have run longer than

20 months

Belgium: 20 months

Longer than three years

29%

Belgium: 31%

Measured nationally: Of 108,424 bankruptcies of legal entities across Belgium, 49% were closed within five years for insufficient assets and 28% after liquidation, 3% were withdrawn. After five years, 20% were still open. Half had ended after 26 months (a quarter after 15, three quarters after 51 months).

This counts companies with this main activity in the register on 3 November 2026. The outcome itself is not measured by sector. The activity of a company that leaves the register after its bankruptcy is too often not kept to compare closed cases fairly.

Outcome by court and division

Spread across the country

by region and province · 133 of 161 enterprises with a registered office on file

Flanders 98 · 73.7%
Wallonia 26 · 19.5%
Brussels 9 · 6.8%

West Flanders WVL 23

East Flanders OVL 24

Antwerp ANT 20

Flemish Brabant VLB 12

Limburg LIM 19

Brussels BRU 9

Hainaut HAI 7

Walloon Brabant WBR 3

Namur NAM 1

Liège LIE 12

Luxembourg LUX 3

fewer moremax 24

This sector's balance sheets on the map, by municipality and down to the address

Largest employers

NACE division 47 · staff from the latest accounts

1 Colruyt Food RetailHalle 16,584 FTEfinancial year 2026
2 CARREFOUR BELGIUMZaventem 6,366 FTEfinancial year 2025
3 Colruyt GroupHalle 4,183 FTEfinancial year 2026
4 Delhaize Le Lion/De LeeuwAsse 3,423 FTEfinancial year 2025
5 IKEA BELGIUMZaventem 3,339 FTEfinancial year 2025

177 of the 60,409 companies in NACE division 47 have a parent company abroad. Main parent countries: Netherlands (54), France (51) and Germany (15). Together they employ 30,846 of the division's 222,284 FTE: 14%, against 15% for Belgium as a whole.

Subsidies in this sector

per register · legal entities with an enterprise number

Flemish subsidies €415.4m awarded 9,039 recipients · 2022 to 2025 · largest: Erkenning en subsidiëring als maatwerkafdeling
Federal transfers 50.6m amount as published 38 recipients · 2023 to 2025 · largest: Toelagen OCMW's recht op maatschappelijke integratie
Wallonia-Brussels Federation €36.2m paid 112 recipients · 2021 to 2025 · largest: Subventions aux organisations de jeunesse (décret du 20 juin 1980 et du 26 mars 2009)
EU budget €76.1m attributed share 24 recipients · 2021 to 2025 · largest: Information and communication technology
EU research €8.5m eu contribution 13 recipients · 2008 to 2026 · largest: Horizon 2020

Explore every recipient in this sector

Insights on Retail trade

The number of starters per 100 companies in NACE division 47 is higher than that of 67% of the 87 NACE divisions with this figure.

This sector's historical share is higher than that of 67% of the 88 NACE divisions with this figure.

The median bankruptcy probability in NACE division 47 is 0.6%, against 0.2% for Belgium as a whole. It is computed over 56,856 scored companies.

The comparison with Belgium as a whole and with the other divisions is as of 03-11-2026 05:30.

Method and sources

Every company registered today counts under its main activities in the KBO. Establishment units do not count. The count follows the NACE 2025 classification, the version in which code 47526 exists.

The historical share is the share of current registrations for which a bankruptcy opening was published in the past five years. A company with more than one main activity counts in each of those sectors. The historical share is not a future bankruptcy probability.

The comparison with Belgium as a whole and with the other NACE divisions rests on an overview of every division, counted again each night. Each division is counted in the version of the NACE classification in which it exists. A standing such as "higher than 80%" compares with the other divisions that have the figure. A division's bankruptcy probability is the median over its companies with a score. Their number is given with the figure.

The filed-accounts figures cover the whole NACE division 47, not only NACE 47526. There are too few filed annual accounts per five-digit code to compute them separately. Each median is the value of the middle company, computed over the division's annual accounts of financial year 2025, and is shown only from 30 accounts. A share (loss-making, negative equity) counts that year's accounts with that trait.