Netherlands’ economy is the 17th largest in the world, according to the World Bank in 2019. This economy is a consolidated effort of the public and private sector. While the public sector rose post World War II, in the 1980s privatization of many state owned enterprises like Royal Dutch Airlines tipped the scales and brought a balance in the economy of the country. The current economic state of Netherland is mixed. The western part of the country is highly developed and central to all the economic activity.
It is essential to know that Netherland is a great service provider and exporter while importing many basic necessities. This has been highly impacted by the Covid-19 situation across the world, as global trade had come to a halt in 2020. To add to the already suffering export, trade difficulties between UK and EU & US and China has also affected the demand. The market is picking up post vaccine but the uncertainties in consumer demand and financial difficulties post pandemic has made it tough for the trade, especially export to bounce back to its original state.
2021 is seeing the rise in global trade but the graph, unlike other sectors is said to grow steadily as things come back to normal over a period of few years. The ICT sector of the country has not been untouched. Manufacturing, equipment wholesale and services are the three major factors contributing to the ICT sector in the Netherlands. The effect of pandemic has been severe on this industry too as the manufacturing and export of ICT equipment has been halted due to stringent measures. To counterbalance, the demand has picked up in 2021 as the world is turning to cloud support.
Many countries have seen a boom in the demand of ICT equipment and thus increase in manufacturing has helped Netherland’s Information and Communication Technology sector bounce back to a certain extent. In terms of ICT services, IaaS (Internet as a Service) and PaaS (Platform as a Service) are making the highest economical contribution within the subsector. The increase in use of cloud services has also contributed to the sector’s growth.
This indicates that the rise of different aspects of the ICT sector in the Netherlands has taken the load off manufacturing and trade aspects of the sector in terms of economical contribution and the graph of the future looks promisingly balanced compared to the pre pandemic situation of the country.