It is asthonishing to see how divided the "Dutch development Community" is. Defense of vested interests is more rule than exception. The Ministery for development cooperation can pick and choose out of the many opnions.
A realistic vision is required on what The Netherlands as a small country with limited resources wants and can contribute to support developing countries. Fewer countries and fewer themes than hitherto must be selected for effective development cooperation.
Only selected themes in choosen countries will qualify for Government subsidies. All other themes and countries are left to private initiatives without subsidy.
Much more attention should be given to enhance cooperation between civil society, knowledge institutes, government and the private sector around the selected themes.Something like a "Dutch Agro-Food N.V." or "Dutch Water N.V.", should bring the resources together to have some real impact on poverty and hunger reduction.
The role of the private sector should become much more prominent, without entrepreneurship sustainable progress will be an illusion.
The fact that the WRR intervieuwed only a handful of representatives of the private sector out of a total of 500 people intervieuwed and spent no more than 8 out of 300 pages in the report on the role of private companies is a serious omission. It is imperative to improve on that and give the private sector much more than the benefit of the doubt in its capabilities to play a significant and beneficiary role in development cooperation.