The ministry of Economic Affairs will cut 20 million euros from the DLO budget next year. Or will it? No, says Wageningen UR: DLO will probably receive 14 million euros less. The government budget for 2014 is not easy to decipher. But it does state categorically that DLO will be getting 72.1 million euros from the ministry of Economic Affairs for statutory research tasks, the Knowledge Base and research assignments. This year the amount was 91.8 million. The cuts will be made in the areas of the Knowledge Base and research assignments (fundamental research), whose funding will drop from 41 to 21 million. But that is not the full picture, says Wageningen UR spokesman Simon Vink. From consultations with the ministry it transpires that DLO will receive about 6 million less next year – as previously announced. It is also possible that the ministry will allocate fewer research assignments, to the tune of another 8 million euros. The shortfall might turn out to be less (perhaps 10 million) if the ministry does allocate more research assignments to DLO after all.
The university’s income for the next year is known because it is calculated according to a set system at the ministry of Education, in which the university gets a fixed basic sum plus an amount per student. DLO’s income is not fixed at all, as it depends on the number of research assignments given by the ministry.