Editor,

RE: "Financial institutions should not overlook agriculture” (The New Times, September 3).

Insurance products for any economic activity emerge only when there is a large enough take-up to make it possible to spread the risk to a large customer base. Like credit-scoring, it also requires a track record as a basis for realistic actuarial calculations to be made.

In a situation like ours where these two conditions are absent, public policy, including financial incentives and other positive measures to support the development of insurance, products for agriculture and agro-processing are needed for this subsector of insurance and finance to take off.

It won’t be the first time that the Rwandan public sector has taken the lead in successfully creating and/or expanding the market when the private sector has been reluctant to do so.

The history of the country’s luxury hotel industry, the aviation industry or of its mobile telephony are excellent pointers of how the Government of Rwanda has led the way in the creation of local industries when both local and foreign private sector investors have been reluctant to do so.

Mwene Kalinda