Rwanda is considered to be among the five fastest reforming countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and among the 20 fastest reforming nations in the world. This was revealed yesterday during the launch of the World Bank’s Doing Business Report: 2009.

The report ranks Rwanda 139 out of 181 countries, up from 148 out of 178 countries in the previous year.

The improvement in the position is attributed to the progress Rwanda made in key areas such as dealing with licenses, registering property, trading across borders and enforcing contracts.

Every year, the World Bank provides a quantitative measure of regulations for starting a business, dealing with construction permits, employing workers, registering property and getting credit.

The report also looks at indicators such as protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across boarders, enforcing contracts and closing business as they apply to domestic small and medium size enterprises in their respective countries.

In dealing with construction permits, Rwanda was ranked fourth top reformer globally. It improved its ranking by 35 places from 125 to 90.

This is attributed to combining application for location clearance and building permits in a single form.

The country has also merged application forms for water, electricity and sewerage, something which has reduced bureaucracy in setting up a business.

Francis Gatare, the Director General of the Rwanda Investment and Export Promotion Agency (RIEPA) said that Rwandans should not be carried away by the World Bank report reforms.

"This is just one aspect of the broader reform programme we have,” he said, adding, "Government is focusing on demand-driven reforms.

We shall engage all the stakeholders especially the private sector to select these reforms”.  Rwanda is also the second best performer in the ‘Registering property’ category. It reduced registration fees, issued a presidential decree that replaced a 6 percent fee with a flat rate of Frw20,000.

This helped the country to reduce the procedure by four and costing an entrepreneur less than one percent of the property value.  The report also indicates that following extended customs operating hours, Rwanda makes it easier for entrepreneurs to trade because fewer trucks are stuck at her borders overnight.

Vincent Karega, the State Minister in charge of Industry and Investment promotion said that he was happy with the progress the country was making and that government is committed to making Rwanda a better destination for business.

"We all need to play a role in identifying the bottlenecks and recording improvement,” Karega advised.

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