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Dutch Government Encourages Development

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The Dutch government has given entrepreneurs a way to do business in developing countries, without jumping through hoops to do so. The Dutch Good Growth Fund offers a source of financing for development-related businesses to improve the economies of developing countries, create jobs and increase production capacity locally.

The Dutch Good Growth Fund (DGGF) is seeking win-win situations: helping locally and fixing globally. The DGGF is divided into three subsections:

  1. Financing small to medium businesses looking to make development-related investments in low-income countries. These are companies located in the Netherlands, investing in business in other countries.
  2. Financing enterprises within low-income countries. These are small businesses in other countries that a Dutch company will support.
  3. Financing small to medium businesses wanting to export to low-income countries. These are Dutch companies exporting to other countries.

This Netherlands based loan fund is comprised of 700 million Euros from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Out of the total loans, 20 percent of the funding goes towards businesses in fragile states, and another 20 percent goes to women entrepreneurs.  The funding applies to 66 countries throughout the globe, all of which have emerging markets and low incomes.

The program was launched in 2014, and has yet to make any significant progress. The idea is promising—helping us while helping others—but it does not seem to be working as efficiently as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had hoped. By targeting small businesses, the waves of success are inherently smaller.

These small waves of success, however, could amount to something big. The Dutch Good Fun Program is still only in its second year and it has already reached out to over 66 countries, helping their own local economy and boosting the morale of small business entrepreneurs. This is a program to watch out for.

– Hannah Resnick

Sources: Agripro Focus, Berenschot, Centre of Research on Multinational Corporations, Government of Netherlands
Photo: GNBCC