The National Office for Annual Holidays, ONVA, paid out €3.5 billion in holiday allowances to 1.2 million workers in 2022, it said on Thursday in its annual report.
The main mission of the ONVA is to pay for the annual holidays of workers and artists who are not independents.
It disbursed €3,509,902,055.94 (gross) in 2022, compared with €3,412,747,764.79 (gross) in 2021, an increase of 2.85%.
The number of workers receiving holiday pay, meanwhile, rose by 16,290.
"Faced with various unforeseen world events and radical changes in our economic environment, ONVA has made a significant financial contribution to guarantee the payment of holiday pay to workers," the body commented. "Necessary efforts were made to deal with the consequences of the energy crisis."
In particular, the office supported the tourism sector by enabling holiday centres, which were experiencing financial difficulties, to benefit from reasonable and realistic adjustments to their loans.
In addition, in 2022, an advertising campaign launched to promote the online service 'Moncomptedevacances.be' increased the visibility of the tool, ONVA recalled in its report.
More than 832,000 workers logged on to their accounts to check the length of their holidays, and the amount or payment date of their holiday allowances, a jump of 29.4% on the previous year.
The priority for the ONVA management committee in 2023 will be to "rebuild the reserves" depleted following "the coronavirus crisis and uncompensated additional expenditure."
