FDI assets and liabilities as share of GDP in Belgium in 2016

This statistic shows the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) assets and liabilities as share of GDP in Belgium as of 2016. It shows that the ratio of the FDI liabilities outweighed the FDI assets. A Foreign Direct Investment is an investment made by a company or individual in one country in business interests in another country, in the form of either establishing business operations or acquiring business assets in the other country, such as ownership or controlling interest in a foreign company. The banking sector in Belgium has two important characteristics. First, banking is deemed an important part of Belgian culture with a relatively high number of bank offices in the country. In 2015, for example, the total number of offices of banks established in Belgium reached 4,519 in the Flemish region. Second, the Belgian banking landscape has the presence of several big non-Belgian banking concerns, notably Dutch bank ING and France-based BNP Paribas. In 2016, BNP Paribas Fortis, BNP Paribas' Belgian daughter, reached a phased-in Common Equity Tier 1 (CET 1) ratio of approximately 14 percent. In 2016, BNP Paribas Fortis was the leading Belgium-based bank when it comes to assets, with a total of approximately 298 billion euros.