Guest column – The Netherlands: The place to be

Isn’t that an overoptimistic title for a column about the state of the Dutch economy? What about the daily gloomy articles in the newspapers? Negative growth figures, a high budget deficit, record numbers of business going broke.

It is true. The current economic situation is not a good news show. But if we look at the fundamentals of the Dutch economy we see a totally different picture. The Netherlands is performing surprisingly well internationally. Moreover it is doing better and better in recent years.

Let’s start a countdown with some surprising facts.

136. If one looks for the Netherlands on a world map one needs a magnifying glass. 135 countries in the world have a larger land area. But is size all that matters?

62. The Netherlands is densely populated, one of the reasons we have such an excellent infrastructure, but we also are somewhat overregulated. However, with almost 17 million inhabitants, there are still 61 countries worldwide with a bigger population.

20. Economically the Netherlands is performing much better than one might expect. We are still the 20th economy of the world. So where is our invitation for the G20?

12. Dutchies like to complain a lot, and one of our favourite subjects to complain about is the quality of our educational system. Based on facts? Not at all! In The Times top 200 of the world twelve Dutch universities are ranked. Only the US and the UK outperformed us.

11. Due to its economic performance, excellent infrastructure and high quality of education a lot of foreign companies find their way to the Netherlands and increasingly so with their R&D-activities. We are currently number eleven in the world when it comes to attracting foreign direct investment.

5. Maybe most surprisingly and contra-intuitive is the fact that the Netherlands has risen over the last couple of years from position twelve to the fifth place on the global ranking of most competitive economies. Ahead even of Germany, the US and Japan.

4. Asked for their opinion of the collaboration between companies and the government the respondents place the Netherlands number four in the world. Let’s take as an example the relatively new Topsector policy where companies, knowledge institutes and the government joined forces to make nine sectors in the Netherlands, among which is the water sector, even more innovative and competitive.

2. Remember where we started with the small land area the Netherlands has? How on earth is it possible that the Netherlands is the second agro exporter worldwide? Well it is and we are very proud of it.

1. Is the Netherlands best in something? Not in soccer anymore. The Netherlands is the most entrepreneurial country in the EU! No other country in Europe has such a high percentage of entrepreneurs. One out of eight working people in the Netherlands earn their money as an entrepreneur.

Like most of the countries the Netherlands is facing tremendous challenges due to the worldwide economic crisis. But the fundamentals of our economy are so strong that we are still “The place to be”.

Rinke Zonneveld
Director Entrepreneurship Department
Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation