The Netherlands participation in the US project to create a new jet fighter known as the JSF will not create many more jobs, according to the government’s macro-economic advisory body CPB.

MPs had asked the CPB to look into the effect of the jet on the the economy after PricewaterhouseCoopers claimed it would bring in €16bn and produce 50,000 man years of employment.
The CPB said PWC’s forecasts were ‘perhaps considerably overstated’. The advisory firm based its calculations on there being no increase in productivity between now and 2052 and included work done by Dutch multinational companies in foreign countries, the CPB said.
But the organisation representing Dutch firms involved in developing the JSF told news agency ANP that the project had already led to Dutch firms winning orders worth up to €800m.
Fact-finding
Meanwhile, the US government’s audit office says it is too risky for the Netherlands to decide next year whether or not to order the JSF to replace the airforce’s aging F16s, ANP reports.
Instead, the decision should be postponed to 2011 or 2012, the audit office told Dutch MPs in Washington on a fact-finding mission.