The Dutch government is cutting its budget for development aid. At the same time, the money that remains will be spent differently.

The change is in part a result of the across-the-board cuts mandated by the financial crisis. But it also represents a turning point in Dutch philosophy toward aid.

Deputy minister Ben Knapen says development aid needs to become more efficient, more oriented toward economic growth, and less sporadic.

"It has to become more businesslike, of course. Everyone agrees on that. It has already become quite a bit more efficient. The image is worse than the reality. It is no longer a bunch of do-gooder hippies like it once was. But it has to become even more businesslike."

Mr Knapen is about to force efficiencies onto the sector. Next year’s budget will be cut by eight percent, with plans to cut 20 percent of the budget in the next four years. All three ways that the Dutch government gives aid will be cut – direct bilateral aid, aid through the European Union and international organizations such as the World Bank, and subsidies to non-governmental organizations.

Fewer countries
Five countries will most likely not receive general budget support next year: Benin, Senegal, Moldova, Burundi en Zambia. Rwanda and Tanzania were already cut. The 40 countries which currently receive other kinds of direct aid from the Dutch government will likely be reduced to 12. Mr Knapen will announce the first five of these ‘partner countries’ this week.

The changes Mr Knapen is overseeing were recommended in a report published last year, called Less pretention, more ambitions (see RNW article: Dutch development aid: unprofessional and ineffective). One of the authors was Mr Knapen himself. He is now implementing his own recommendations.

But those recommendations are controversial. The opposition Labour Party’s Sjoera Dikkers says development aid is being sold out:

"Knapen is the deputy minister of the sell-out. Development aid is being privatized, reduced, polluted."

Moral and political duty
Dikkers’ Labour Party colleague, Jan Pronk, agrees. He was development aid minister for a total of fourteen years and is a former UN special representative in Sudan. Mr Pronk is the personification of the Dutch development policy over the past thirty years. He says development aid is a moral and political duty, and its budget should not be included in balancing the national books.

Indeed, Knapen’s opponents have pointed out that even the United Kingdom, which is making more radical cuts in its national budget than the Netherlands, is not cutting development aid.

Knapen's defense is that even after the cuts, the Netherlands will maintain its position as generous donor country. He says officials should not let their emotion and sympathy for human suffering guide their policy decisions:

"People get justifiably excited about things that happen in the world, and decide to make funds available, and if you keep doing that in different areas, that policy becomes spread incredibly thin across countries and topics."

Knapen will be implementing these policies as part of a minority government, supported in parliament by Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party, which wants to eliminate development aid altogether. So the political support is in place. However, it is not yet clear how much public support Knapen has for such a fundamental shift in policy.

WikiLeaks
The Netherlands recently got confirmation of its leading position in the world of development aid. A document leaked by WikiLeaks quoted US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praising the Netherlands as a ‘world leader in foreign development assistance’. Ben Knapen is betting this country can maintain that leading role, even after he makes major cuts in Dutch development aid.