Wishing you a very succesful 2012!

Liesbeth Staps, Executive Director NFIA UK & Ireland, shares her views

The Dutch Prime Minister, Mr Mark Rutte, underlined the strong economic ties between the UK and Netherlands with his visit to London, Birmingham and Manchester. We were proud to host a dinner with a select num­ber of foreign companies with interests in the Netherlands.

Mr Rutte underlined the added value of foreign companies’ investments for the Dutch econ­omy. There are almost 6,000 for­eign companies with establish­ments in the Netherlands; 4% of our companies are foreign-owned. These generate 16% of private employment in the Neth­erlands. Most importantly they generate 24% of the added value of Dutch business and contrib­ute 31% to the total turnover and 30% of R&D investments!

The Dutch government endeav­ors to stimulate private invest­ments in R&D and introduces a new tax deduction for invest­ments in R&D, effective January 1 2012. In 2012 the NFIA UK & Ireland will gear its efforts on the earlier mentioned priority sectors and more specifically on food, high tech and energy.