BRUSSELS, BELGIUM, JUNE 22, 2011 – In a public statement issued today to the XBRL munity, Mr. Didier J.L. Reynders, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance of Belgium outlined the benefits the Belgium ernment and business munity have obtained using the global, freely-available, eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) business and financial reporting global data format for the exchange and analysis of critical information. XBRL creates a mon language among different panies and regulators in order to stimulate the exchange of enomic and financial information at a lower st.

“The overall objective of XBRL is to improve ernment internal functioning, but also rce the administrative burden of panies in Belgium reporting to ernment agencies,” said Mr. Didier Reynders. In 2010, the use of XBRL alone at the National Bank of Belgium has resulted in a 35% rction in filing fees for small to medium size enterprises and an estimated annual administrative burden rction estimated at 17.3 million. In addition, the use of XBRL has rced the st of annual maintenance at the regulatory level to a third of its original st. XBRL is a first step in harmonizing data exchanges with other regulators in Belgium, Europe and the World as well as to promote better transparency, acuntability and risk management.”

The XBRL platform for Belgium was introduced by the National Bank of Belgium (NBB) in November 2004 as a tool for the standardizing and optimising the exchange of financial information. Today the XBRL Belgium ernment platform is posed of eight agencies where financial reporting plays a key role in their operation. Four of these ernment agencies are closely related to panies obliged to provide regulatory reporting data to the Belgium ernment. These agencies include: the Federal Public Service Finance; the Financial Services and Markets Authority FSMA (former CBFA), the National Bank of Belgium and the mission for Acunting Standards.

In other news, Mr. Reynders announced that The Federal Public Services Finance has created a new version of tax that will use the XBRL data standard to more effectively llect rporate tax return information by means of a structured file system. This new version will also include the tax statements related to non-residents and panies as well as for individual tax filers.

“We must carry out the prevention mechanisms necessary to avoid risks that uld damage our ability to ntinuously improve the welfare of our citizens,” said Reynders. “This optimisation and the st savings may only be achieved in full if all of the players take part in the integration process aimed at harmonisation and use standards such as XBRL for exchange of data critical data used by ernments and the capital markets to make better decisions.”