Most drivers of the stable economy cited include external sector industries such as, tea, exports, tourism and remittances

Finance Minister and Economic Planning James Musoni said that regardless of the current global financial crisis, Rwanda’s economy is still stable.

Musoni was briefing the press on the economic performance in the first quarter at the Ministry’s Head Office in Kigali on Monday.

"We are not worried because our economy performed far better than we had anticipated, thus we don’t project to lay off workers because of the global financial crisis,” Musoni assured.

Most drivers of the stable economy cited include external sector industries such as, tea, exports, tourism and remittances.

Tea fetched $11.5m in the first quarter of 2009 compared to 10.4 million in the same period last year giving it an increase of 10 percent.

In tourism sector, the overall visitors increased from 95,320 last year to 120,809 in the first three months of this year giving an increase of 27 percent.

It is said that significant growth was registered in leisure tourists which rose by 50 percent and business visitors that increased by 25 percent. Revenues in tourism have also increased from $22m in the first quarter of last year to $24 million this year.

Remittances over the first quarter reached $47.1 and it’s said to be one third higher than those received over the same period of last year. It has been projected that remittances will fall by 40 percent.

Inflation by March this year had dropped to 17 percent from 22 percent in December last year and it has now reached 13.64 percent.

"Seventeen percent is in line with our projections of Q1 2009, we are therefore on track to achieve single digit by end December this year if we are not affected by external forces,” Musoni said.

Increase in imports which of late has been the main cause of high inflation in the country continue to rise than expected, currently at 60 percent compared to last year, this is due to increase in construction materials industrial goods for food manufacturing which contribute 25 percent of the increase.

However, Musoni said that the increase in imports does not give a true picture because most of the products were imported last year.

Total revenue collected for the first quarter amounted to Rwf95.9 billion against Rwf88.2 billion surpassing the target by Rwf7.7b.

The government of Rwanda has embarked on agriculture transformation through different initiatives like crop intensification, disease prevention and assistance to producers which have in return contributed to a significant of 16.4 percent and 20.3 percent in food and export crop production respectively.

Quoting World Bank report "Rwanda has become the most active reformers of business regulation world wide this decade.”

Rwanda was ranked 139 in World Bank ‘Doing Business’ rankings. Though it’s now ranked in the top-third of Sub –Saharan African countries government is targeting two digit rankings.

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