{The government has developed strategies that can support the mining sector which is one of the main foreign exchange earners. }
“Government of Rwanda aims at exporting minerals worth $400million by the year 2017. The government therefore looks at ways of helping the mining sector which will help it contribute more to national development,” Michael Biryabarema Deputy Director General/ Geology and Mines Department said during the recently concluded World Bank’s Rwanda Economic Update report presentation in Kigali.
According to Biryabarema government has developed a new mining law that replaced the one of 2008 that came out in June 2014 and is aimed at making it easy for investors to come and invest in the mining sector.
“This new law allows investors to secure an enabling environment for investment through addressing the challenges involved,” Biryabarema said.
He said the new law offers mining licenses with duration of 5- 25 years and this duration is offered depending on the volumes to be mined and the amount to be invested which support long term investors in the sector.
“This gives investors many chances of getting loans from banks since there is ample time to pay such loans back,” he said.
According to Biryabarema the procedure to put such licenses under stages will come from the ministerial order that is still under process.
“We aim at increasing the mining volumes that have remained stagnant since 2011 making the mining sector more productive like it was before,” Biryabarema said.
“The legal framework introduced has strengthened out the record of the demarcations of mining licenses and the management of such licenses has been addressed,” he said.
“A model agreement that has seen many companies sign contracts with the government was recently signed by the cabinet and this is again bringing in many miners to the country,” he said.
Different forms of taxes have been introduced in this sector leading to introduction of the loyalty tax which has seen the country collect over Rwf3.4billion since September 2013.
“With such introduced taxes the government just needs support from organizations like the World Bank so that such a strategy can be implemented so as to help the sector improve more,” Biryabarema said.
The government again aims at changing this sector from the traditional mining systems it has been going through to modern ones hence help increase on the sector’s productivity.
The mining sector of Rwanda contributes over 1.2% to GDP minus construction materials that are also formed under this sector. “If all such sectors that make up the mining sector are fully employed we believe the sector can even contribute more,” Biryabarema said.
The sector offers over 33,000 Rwandans with hope to create more off-farm jobs if fully supported. This sector is still very small but growing steadily and this gives hope to the government of offering the needed target by 2017.
Business Week
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