A dip in the numbers. But what story do they tell?

May 2025: investment in tangible fixed assets in the Netherlands fell by 4.0% compared to the same month a year earlier. Headlines stop here. But numbers, like people, have motives. They speak when you learn to listen, not to the volume, but to the direction of the music.

In a time when entrepreneurs are clinging to cash like sailors in a storm, this drop isn’t surprising. But it isn’t superficial either. It’s not just about one fewer working day in May 2025 compared to May 2024. And it certainly isn’t just a logistical delay in truck deliveries.

The soul of the Dutch economy is recalibrating. Not retreating. Let me show you why.

The sharp fall: it’s not just the buildings

What declined? Mostly buildings and road transport:

• Construction investments were cautious.
• Vans, trailers, and trucks lost ground.

It’s the classic flight from heavy, slow assets. Brick and diesel no longer feel like “assets”, they feel like anchors. Especially when entrepreneurs are shifting from owning infrastructure to renting agility.

But the plot thickens.

What rose in May 2025 was investment in machinery, including defense-grade equipment. That’s not just a counterweight; it’s a signal.

We’re moving from expansion to resilience.

Machinery up? That’s a behavioral shift

Buying a truck is a bet on delivery.

Buying machinery, especially high-spec industrial or defense tech, is a bet on survival, capability, and control.

It’s also a choice made by entrepreneurs who’ve accepted that supply chain dependencies, geopolitical friction, and operational fragility are not temporary glitches. They’re structural conditions.

This is a GRC shift disguised as a budgetary one.

Investment Radar: when the clouds gather slowly

CBS’s Investment Radar in June showed conditions slightly less favorable than in May. Why? Because exports didn’t rise as strongly year-on-year. When the outside world doesn’t buy, insiders pause.

The radar doesn’t predict, it whispers. It tracks sentiment, liquidity, credit conditions, and market signals. In May and June 2025, the whisper is clear: hold back on what can’t move, double down on what protects.

Buildings can wait. Machines can’t.

Look back to look forward

Here’s the broader pattern:

We’re no longer in a world of “recovery.” We’re in the age of selective reinforcement.

The governance angle: Don’t read this as decline

If you're a CEO, policy-maker, or risk officer, let me be blunt:

The question is not why investment dropped. The question is where it shifted.

And here’s where it’s going:

• Away from static assets (warehouses, physical offices, diesel fleets)
• Toward adaptive systems (automated machinery, digital command layers, energy-efficient platforms)
• Toward protection and independence (cybersecurity, private logistics, dual-use tech)

This is not an economic deceleration. It’s an ethical repositioning.

What once was seen as “capital formation” is now being weighed against future risk exposure.

Final thought: invest like a mason, not a gambler

As I often say: clarity is not a luxury. It’s the only form of protection that scales.

So don’t look at May 2025 as a lull. Read it as a lesson in restraint, and a nudge toward smarter, braver bets.

The building can wait. But your judgment cannot.