Monitoring development cooperation policy

This first monitoring report asks how fragmented policy is and outlines the many themes and activities, organisations and countries that the Netherlands funds. Future reports will consider the government's success is achieving the desired focus, policy cohesion and cost savings. The Court of Audit will also look at the organisation and implementation of policy and the extent to which more expertise is actually built up.

The government believes development cooperation policy covers too many themes, too many countries, too many partner organisations and too many instruments. Owing to the fragmentation, the government thinks it is difficult to learn from the experiences gained and management costs are too high. Furthermore, the Netherlands can inadequately specialise and develop expertise on specific themes. The government therefore wants to introduce more focus and coherence into development cooperation policy. The government's analysis of the problem is consistent with the Court of Audit's earlier findings that there is an accumulation of goals, instruments, actions and impacts and a multitude of organisations and countries are involved without the relationship between these elements and the amount of associated funding being clear.