MR Minister Clarinval sees no “immediate panacea” against the current price hikes and inflation. He fears the situation will continue for months. “I am quite pessimistic,” Clarinval said yesterday in the talk show of RTL TVI anchor Pascal Vrebos. The minister hopes that the crisis will not last ten years, as economist Bruno Colmant predicted, but was unable to see favorable forecasts for our country last week. “We see, for example, that people are buying more on credit again. This means that they are starting to have problems buying consumer goods, such as a television. That is disturbing.”
Clarinval also fears that the war crisis on a socio-economic level will become even worse than the corona crisis, which he experienced “from the inside”. He points out that inflation and the rise in commodity prices were already underway at the end of last year, but that the war exacerbated them even more. “It affects everyone, but especially the sectors that depend on raw materials. The entire food, flour, oil and butter sector will see price increases. And all building materials in the construction sector, which have already risen sharply.” The metal sector will also have to suffer that fate, Clarinval said. “I fear that we will face difficult macroeconomic conditions in Belgium,” he concluded.