Statistics Netherlands looked at the profits of companies, the balance of taxes and subsidies and the expenditure on dividends. This income from companies yielded last year to 162.5 billion euros. That is 14.5 billion euros more than about 2023.
Compared to four years ago, it is an increase of almost 50 billion euros. Especially the profits increased considerably last year. The growth was still somewhat filled in because companies pooped more dividends than in the previous year.
10 billion euros left over
All that extra money did not cause a proportional increase in investments, for example in business premises, business cars and machines. These investments increased by less than 4 billion euros last year. With that, companies together had more than 10 billion euros for strengthening financial assets, for example by saving or repaying loans.
Shell rewards shareholders despite considerable profit trap through weak oil market
CBS head economist Peter Hein van Mulligen cannot indicate why the investments are left behind. “We only register this,” he says. “It is possible that companies have also spent more money on, for example, purchasing their own shares, but we cannot see that in these figures.” According to him, the latter could not explain the whole difference anyway.
2025 not better
It can be concluded from the figures that the business community as a whole could put more money into investments. “These are figures for 2024. But it does not look like the image for 2025 will suddenly be very different,” says Van Mulligen. “That there is now a lot of geopolitical uncertainty does not help.”