Over the same period there was a net financial inflow recorded from the rest of the world amounting to nearly R204 billion, compared with the net financial outflow of about R45 billion from 1985 to 1993. As a result, the level of foreign investment in South Africa amounted to R736 billion at the end of 2002.
Starting with his first annual report, Duisenberg has always maintained that DNB would not support an expansionary budgetary policy that would result in unsustainable deficits. A view like that was not at all obvious in the 1970s and 80s. Between the second world war and the 1970s, Dutch economic policy had been of a Keynesian nature, with scope for activist, counter-cyclical budgetary stimulus.