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Doing business in the Netherlands

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The Netherlands is situated in north Western Europe neighbouring Germany, Belgium and the North sea. The kingdom of the Netherlands also entails the Dutch Antilles in the Caribbean which includes Aruba, Curaçao, and st. Maarten which all have a home rule status as well as saba, st. Eustatius and Bonaire.

The country is made up out of 12 provinces. Holland is a popular term for the Netherlands by foreigners, yet in reality it refers to the two combined provinces of Noord (North) and Zuid (south) Holland.

A large part of the Dutch land has been reclaimed from the sea and is actually situated below sea level (in the form of “polders”) and protected by dykes. Much of this land was drained after a barrier dyke closed of the North sea in 1932. The province Flevoland consists of two polders and is the youngest province (finalized in 1986). In total, 20% of the Dutch country is reclaimed land.

2. A competitive infrastructure

Many of the large European rivers (Rhine, Meuse and scheldt) run through the Netherlands to end up in the North sea. This partly explains the logistical importance of the country as a gateway to Europe. Via the rivers it supplies much of the German and Belgian industrial areas through one of the biggest seaports in the world, Rotterdam. Additionally the Netherlands also is an important international air hub via the International airport of schiphol Amsterdam. The importance of the Netherlands as a distribution country is confirmed by the fact that more than 50% of European distribution centers is based in the Netherlands.

The IT infrastrastructure is also of a very high level. The Netherlands ranks 3rd on the 2009 global e-readiness ranking of EIu.

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