DAC Peer Review of the Netherlands

This review contains the Main Findings and Recommendations of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and the report of the Secretariat. It was prepared with examiners from Sweden and Japan for the Peer Review meeting held on 12 September 2006. The review welcomed the Netherlands’ strong commitment to policy coherence for development and to maintaining high levels of development aid. The Committee noted that the Netherlands gives strong attention to issues of aid quality and uses innovative approaches to enable recipient countries to lead their own development agenda. It identified a number of recommendations (e.g. continuing efforts towards geographic and sector concentration, ensuring that spending targets do not jeopardise the principles of aid effectiveness, developing a more coherent strategy with respect to private sector development, and developing overall aid effectiveness and conditionality strategies) to assist the Netherlands in pursuing its efforts to improve the effectiveness of its development co-operation programmes.