{The Rwanda government’s role in creating a conducive business environment continues to attract more investors and is reflected in the country’s improving rankings globally and at the top in sub-Saharan Africa . }
Rwanda was recently ranked the most competitive economy in East African region, the 3rd in the sub-Saharan Africa next to Mauritius which comes in at 1st position and South Africa at 2nd position.
“Rwanda’s impressive business rankings are a result of a variety of different policies and reforms that the government has put in place in the economic arena and beyond. This means that Rwanda’s competitiveness improvement is based on steady and sustained progress of numerous indicators. This can be seen across the different global reports that rank Rwanda,” Francis Gatare, the Chief Executive Officer Rwanda Development Board said.
According to the World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Index (GCI), Rwanda had moved from the 66th position it was on last year 2013 to 62th position.
The report shows that the most competitive country globally is Switzerland, followed by Singapore and the USA respectively.
Gatare said Rwanda improved in several factors and is among top ten economies in the world and this so because of different factors as stated here below.
According to GCR there is a lot of improvement registered to Rwanda ranking.
“Rwanda is ranked 62nd this year, retaining its third place in the sub-Saharan African region. As do the other comparatively successful African countries, Rwanda benefits from strong and relatively well-functioning institutions (18th globally), with very low levels of corruption an outcome that is certainly related to the government’s no-tolerance policy, and a good security environment. Its labor markets are efficient (9thglobally), its financial markets are relatively well developed, and Rwanda is characterized by a capacity for innovation that is quite good for a country at its stage of development,” Gatare said.
RDB is constantly collaborating with various institutions in Rwanda to improve the economic competitiveness of the country.
“This has translated into clear policies with concrete outcomes. Good example is the recent agreement and investment of Gigawatt Global to set up a solar power plant in the country,” Gatare said.
“This highlights how RDB is working together with stakeholders and investors to translate the government’s policy objective into the concrete action of increasing access to power in Rwanda,” he said.
Access to electricity is one of the areas measured for economic competitiveness.
Gatare said the establishment of private universities such as Carnegie Mellon, whose first group of students graduated recently, provides access to excellent training offering quality of labor force another area measured in competitiveness.“In addition, more work is being done to improve the ease of doing business in Rwanda and initiatives such as the Public Private Dialogue have been introduced which also impact on the economic competitiveness of the country,” Gatare said.
He said it is not only RDB with reforms to help the country participate more:“Reforms are taking place every day and in every sector to put Rwanda at par with the best countries in the world with hope that next rankings will be even much better.”
Business Week
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