A number of captains of industry in the province of Brabant have written to economic affairs minister Maxime Verhagen, urging him to develop policies to tackle the current crisis, the Financieele Dagblad reports on Wednesday.

The signatories include executives from Philips, VDL, ASMI, DAF and NXP, the paper says.
They want the minister to set up a cross-ministry task force to take speedy decisions on how to lessen the effect of the crisis.
R&D
These could include the reintroduction of part-time unemployment benefit and special measures to ensure research and development is not affected.
They also want the government to bring in export credits and guarantees, which, they say, proved very effective during the previous crisis.
In a reaction, the minister said he shares industries’ concerns but does not support setting up a task force. Many ministries are already active in this field, Verhagen said, pointing to the 10% tax cut for companies which develop new goods and services.