D.J.

Despite the initial fears triggered by the Brexit vote, the Dutch economy continued its steady recovery in 2016 and economic growth with a level above 2% actually outpaced earlier projections.

The Retail Fund aims to increase its assets under management to approximately € 1 billion by 2019. The main drivers of this growth will be acquisitions.

47 Dutch retail properties

The Fund realised a total fund retun of 8.4% (2015: 4.5%), consisting of a 4.6% income return (2015: 4.4%) and a 3.9% capital growth (2015: 0.1%). The total return in Euro's grew to € 64.3 million in 2016, from € 32.2 million in 2015.

We are cautiously optimistic on the outlook for the Dutch economy, following a marked pick-up in growth in the course of 2016 as the Dutch economy appeared to shrug off the initial shock of the Brexit vote.

Bouwinvest aims to provide a solid return on real estate investments for institutional investors and their beneficiaries and to do this in a responsible manner.

Cooperation and engagement with our tenants and other stakeholders is an essential part of our sustainability strategy.

The focus of the Retail Fund's sustainability strategy is on reducing the environmental footprint of the shopping centres or retail assets in its portfolio.

Benchmarking based on the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB) enables the Retail Fund to obtain more insight into the opportunities to improve the sustainability performance measured at fund level.