A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between Mr Rajesh Srivastava, Managing Director, Corporate & Commercial Banking of Rabo India and Mr Frederik Mabesoone, Director Water International. This happened on a Seminar organized by the Royal Dutch Embassy during the State visit of Her Majesty, the Queen of The Netherlands on 25th of October, 2007. The MoU spells out the respective scope of services and aims to combine the strong knowledge of Royal Haskoning and Rabo India in meso-finance and public-private partnerships. The overarching philosophy of the MoU is to facilitate a holistic improvement in water and sanitation infrastructure in identified urban dwellings through public private partnerships to be chalked out in cooperation with the local Government bodies.

Mr Bert Heemskerk, Chairman of the Executive Board of Rabobank, who witnessed the signing ceremony commented that “Rabobank is committed to socially responsible projects. Sanitation in developing countries requires the knowledge and structuring expertise we have to facilitate sustainable projects.” He added that “Rabobank is acknowledged well through Rabo India here and we will ensure that the global skill sets are made available to Rabo India in this initiative.” According to Jan Bout, Chairman of the Board of Management of Royal Haskoning, “acceleration of implementation of the water and sanitation infrastructure is needed to meet the Millenium Development Goal on Water & Sanitation and to reduce health risks”.

By leveraging their knowledge Rabobank and Royal Haskoning want to contribute to the Millennium Development Goals, set by government leaders of 189 countries in 2000: half the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation in 2015. This goal is far behind on schedule. At this moment almost 40% of the Worlds’ population (2.6 billon people) does not have access to sanitation facilities. To increase awareness of the problem, the UN has pronounced 2008 as “International Year of Sanitation”.

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