Rwanda is racing ahead with a program to strengthen and reform its business environment to attract investment, bring opportunity to a growing population, and spur private sector growth. The Investment Climate Advisory Services team of the World Bank Group is supporting these efforts.
Substantial progress has already been made. In 2008, the World Bank Group supported 16 key improvements to Rwanda’s business environment. In recent months, the country enacted four new laws designed to strengthen the private sector, which was devastated by political and social turmoil the country suffered during the 1990s.
Five Areas of Reform
At the invitation of Rwanda’s government, the World Bank Group is working closely with Rwanda’s public and private sectors, offering global expertise and focusing support for business reform in five distinct but related areas.
- Doing Business Reform: Helping Rwanda implement a reform action plan to improve its rank on the annual Doing Business report.
- Business Licensing Reform: Supporting efforts to reduce the costs and complications of doing business by overhauling the country’s cumbersome and often opaque system of business licensing
- Improving Trade Logistics: Helping reduce the time and costs involved in importing and exporting goods by improving inspection systems and simplifying the documentation process.
- Investment Promotion and Facilitation: Helping increase domestic and foreign investment by creating an attractive and conducive investment environment.
- Public Private Dialogue: Supporting closer partnerships between Rwanda’s public and private sectors.
Among areas where business reform has been achieved, Rwanda’s Secured Transaction Act will make it easier for businesses to obtain credit by allowing them to use almost any type of movable asset as collateral.
The Company Law, among other improvements, simplifies company registration by abolishing the cumbersome requirement to notarize documents and publish them in the official gazette.
Doing Business Report |
Small, landlocked, and once heavily dependent on agriculture, Rwanda is positioning itself as an attractive destination for both tourists and foreign investment, while cultivating the hi-tech industry as a driver of growth and employment.
Thanks to an aggressive reform campaign, Rwanda is rapidly climbing the rankings of the World Bank Group’s Doing Business Report, which measures the ease of doing business in more than 180 countries around the world.
Rwanda climbed from 150 in 2008 to 139 in 2009 on the World Bank Group’s ease of doing business rankings, and is expected to improve even further when the 2010 list is issued.
The UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Netherlands are working in partnership with the World Bank Group to help Rwanda improve its business environment |
An improved Labor Code will make it easier for companies to create jobs and hire workers by allowing more flexible employment arrangements. The code also makes provisions for maternity leave, and for protecting children against abusive labor practices.
Rwanda’s new Insolvency Law for the first time establishes a legal regime for bankruptcy and creditor protection in the country.
IFC Director for Eastern and Southern Africa, Jean Philippe Prosper, said: “The Rwanda Investment Climate Reform Project is helping Rwanda improve its regulatory environment, and reduce the costs and time of doing business to create an investment climate that is attractive and competitive. The introduction of these new laws reflects Rwanda’s ongoing commitment to supporting its private sector and encouraging women into business.”
For more information contact:
Jason Hopps
Communications Officer
Johannesburg, South Africa
Phone: +27 11 731 3120
E-mail: jhopps@ifc.org
