Businesses by province and region in Belgium

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• 1,429,763establishment units in Belgium (Q4 2024)
• 120.3establishment units per 1,000 inhabitants
• 1,187,819active VAT-registered businesses in 2024
• 113,289VAT registrations of new businesses in 2024

Establishment units per province

Belgium has three regions and 10 provinces: five in the Flemish Region and five in the Walloon Region. The Brussels-Capital Region belongs to no province; in the tables it appears as a unit of its own next to the provinces.

The table can be scrolled sideways.

An establishment unit is a place where a business or organisation carries out its activity, such as a shop, office or branch; one business can have several. Statbel counts them per municipality of the unit; we added up the municipalities per province. Which businesses and organisations are included is set out in Statbel’s notes on the table.

What the table shows

• Three areas account for 42.3% of the establishment units: Antwerp (230,642), East Flanders (196,898), West Flanders (177,265).
• Density: per 1,000 inhabitants the range runs from 85.1 in Hainaut to 149.8 in Walloon Brabant. Order: Walloon Brabant 149.8, West Flanders 143.6, Brussels-Capital Region 136.9, Flemish Brabant 125.4, East Flanders 124.1, Limburg 118.5, Antwerp 118.4, Namur 111.7, Liège 101.0, Luxembourg (province) 100.9, Hainaut 85.1.
• Brussels-Capital Region has 174,110 establishment units for 1,271,709 inhabitants; as a region of its own it is often planned as a separate sales territory.

For territory planning this means: a nationwide selection is concentrated in Antwerp, East Flanders, West Flanders. If you want to work a particular region, name the province or the municipalities as a filter from the start.

VAT-registered businesses, start-ups and closures by region

The table can be scrolled sideways.

Statbel publishes the VAT statistics by region of the registered office, not by province. Start-ups are new VAT registrations, closures are VAT deregistrations in the course of the year.

• Start-up rate: relative to the active businesses, most businesses were registered in the Brussels-Capital Region (11.7%) and fewest in the Walloon Region (8.7%); Belgium as a whole 9.5%.
• Balance: in all three regions there were more VAT registrations than deregistrations in 2024; for Belgium as a whole the difference was 18,757.

Why the VAT figure differs from the SBS figure

Statbel counts 1,187,819 active VAT-registered businesses for 2024, Eurostat’s structural business statistics 931,405 enterprises. The two counts have different scopes: the VAT statistics include the self-employed with a VAT number, agriculture (section A), public bodies registered for VAT and associations (S94), and they count each VAT registration by its registered office. The SBS count statistical enterprises in sections B to S excluding O and S94. Businesses that are not registered for VAT are missing from the VAT statistics. Neither figure is “the” number of Belgian businesses; each page names the one it uses.

For comparison: records in our database by province

These are our own counts, not official statistics. They show how many records our Belgian company database contained on 5 November 2026: places from Overture Maps plus contact details from the businesses’ websites. A record is a business or an establishment; the province follows from the postcode.

The table can be scrolled sideways.

Our records cannot be compared one to one with Statbel’s establishment units: the map data contain places of businesses and organisations as they appear on maps, not the units registered with the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises. More on the database status page.

Definitions

• Establishment unit (vestigingseenheid): a geographically identifiable place where a business carries out an activity, such as a branch, shop or office.
• VAT-registered business: a business with a VAT registration, by region of its registered office; start-ups and closures are registrations and deregistrations in the reference year.
• Per 1,000 inhabitants: establishment units divided by the population on 1 January 2025, times 1,000, rounded to one decimal place.

How to cite

The official figures come from Statbel and Eurostat; you may reuse them with attribution. Suggestion:

basedecontacts.be: Businesses by province and region in Belgium. Based on Statbel, establishment units by municipality (Q4 2024) and VAT-registered businesses by region (2024); Eurostat, demo_r_d2jan (population on 1 January 2025). Retrieved on 4 November 2026. https://basedecontacts.be/en/data/entreprises-par-province/