The Foundation Antillean Cofinancing Organisation (AMFO) finances projects aimed at poverty reduction on all islands of the Netherlands Antilles. Only projects from non governmental organisations are eligble for funding.

On yearly basis, the Dutch government makes Naf. 20 million guilders available, although with restrictions. These funds are divided over the five islands following a certain distribution code. For Curacao, an amount of Nafl. 7.6 million guilders is available, where as Sint Maarten gets ca. 5.6 million, Bonaire Nafl. 3.6 millions and Saba and St. Eustatius ca. 1.3 million each.

Previously, after the reorganisation of AMFO, it appeared to be impossible to allocate all available funds to good projects in the area of poverty eradication. In the mean time, both the AMFO organisation itself as well as the NGO's are much more experienced with the new procedures and policies. Consequently, more and especially more good applications were submitted to AMFO. Besides, there are the ungoing projects that were initiated in previous years that continue to get funds from AMFO.

AMFO is pleased to see that the NGO field in Curacao has gained a lot in strength and quality. As a result, the available budget for Curacao was depleted already in July 2009 and consequently new applications had to be rejected for the time being. This is very unfortunate, since the large number of applications indicates the great need existing in the community for such projects as well as the available expertise to execute these projects.

Bonaire is expected to show a similar situation in the second half of this year, taken into account the large number of projects that are currently in the pipeline.

For Saba and St. Eustatius, the situation originally looked completely different. These islands in the beginning of the year lacked initiatives for good projects. A combination of very intensive and constructive contact with the respective lt. governors and representatives of NGO's on one hand and heavy input from AMFO staff on the other hand, eventually led to the expectation that by the end of the year also the funds available for these islands will have been allocated.

Hopefully, also the now still expected underspending of funds for this year, will be turned into a complete depletion of the funds by extra efforts from the AMFO staff.