The Rwanda Development Board (RDS) registered 14 investment projects worth $125 million (Rwf70.6 billion) in February 2009.

According to officials at the institution’s Nyarutarama head office, the projects are expected to create about 5,004 jobs when operational, though they have varying implementation schedules.

Claire Akamanzi, the Deputy Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for General Operations said that the registered projects were all issued with investment certificates.

"This guarantees that they (investors) meet and have fulfilled the requirements of doing business in Rwanda,” she explained.

In a breakdown, hotel and tourism industry registered investments worth $5.5 million (Rwf3.1 billion), construction sector $1.6 million (Rwf0.9 million), property development sector $2.3 million (Rwf1.3 billion), general manufacturing $57.3 million (Rwf32.4 billion).

Others like the printing industry registered investments worth $0.4 million (Rwf226 million), agro processing $16.7 million (Rwf9.4 billion), service sector $2.5 million (Rwf1.5 billion) and petroleum $1.5 million (Rwf847 million) respectively.

Within the same month of February, RDB also registered further achievements in its endeavours to improve the country’s investment climate.

Some of the achievements include clearance of 50 percent of backlog commercial cases and conclusion of consultation with the Private Sector Federation (PSF) on business licences and permits.

This follows government’s commitment to undertake priority business reforms to achieve a double digit ranking in next year’s World Bank Doing Business Reforms Report.

Rwanda was ranked 139th out of the 150 countries surveyed in the report last year.

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