Doing Business: Rwanda in top 20 Reformers Globally

“We are happy and determined to move forward every year coming from a very low base and we are committed to do more. A lot is in the pipeline to improve further on the business environment to make Rwanda a much better destination for business.” -- Vincent Karega, Rwandan Minister of State in charge of trade and investment

Kigali, Rwanda, September 25, 2008 -- Making the list of the world’s 20 top reformers and coming only after Senegal, Burkina Faso, Botswana and Liberia as Africa’s top reformers in the recently published Doing Business 2009 report, Rwanda is showing a major improvement in its work to ease the process of doing business.

In 2007, in an effort to counter Rwanda’s ratings in the two previous Doing Business reports (158 and 150) President Paul Kagame authorized the establishment of a national Doing Business Unit, a task force under the Rwanda Investment and Export Promotion Agency (RIEPA), to identify and drive implementation of reforms to improve Rwanda’s business climate.

Rwanda leaped 11 positions to become 139 th in this year’s rating, registering commendable reforms on its way up. One indicator in which Rwanda improved tremendously was registering property. Rwanda boosted its ranking 78 places from 138 to 60, becoming runner-up for best reformer globally.

Reforms

Rwandaintroduced major reforms in several areas, according to Doing Business 2009. It streamlined construction permitting for the second year in a row by combining the applications for location clearance and a building permit in a single form and introducing a single application form for water, sewerage, and electricity connections. This reduced both the number of procedures and the time required for dealing with construction permits.

The time and cost to register a property also fell. A new fixed registration fee was introduced, and centralization of the tax service reduced the time to obtain a certificate of good standing, the report noted.

Rwanda facilitated trade by extending the opening hours of the customs border offices, implementing an electronic data interchange system, and introducing risk-based inspections. Together with growth in the transport sector, this reduced the time to export by five days and the time to import by 27 days—a 40 percent reduction.

Finally, commercial courts began operating in three locations, in Kigali and in the Northern and Southern Provinces, making it easier to enforce contracts.

What Rwanda achieved in easing investment was a collective effort. The Doing Business Unit comprised people from different areas of Rwandan society: central and local government technicians, representatives of the private sector and civil society.

“We are glad to see the government, the media and the private sector all getting committed to position Rwanda where it belongs,” said Rwandan Minister of State in charge of trade and investment Vincent Karega.

Karega called upon different stakeholders to be even more determined.

“The ball is in our court,” he said. “Together we can do more to improve our ranking, we can do more to achieve our vision 2020 objectives and actually a lot is being done both at national and regional levels that will help to improve further the investment environment.”

“We need each one of us,” he added, “to play his role by identifying bottlenecks and proposing solutions.”

The Doing Business report

Doing Business ranks economies based on 10 indicators of business regulation that track the time and cost to meet government requirements in starting and operating a business, trading across borders, paying taxes, and closing a business. The rankings do not reflect such areas as macroeconomic policy, quality of infrastructure, currency volatility, investor perceptions, or crime rates.