Following a short visit by a high-level United Arab Emirates (UAE) delegation, a senior Rwanda Development Board (RDB) official says Rwanda-UAE investment relations will only get healthier.

RDB’s Principal Deputy CEO George Mulamula said that discussions with the eight-man delegation of top UAE business executives and government officials were based on starting a relationship, "and that was achieved.”

"We have now started a dialogue, basically, a meaningful dialogue one that can be used to gauge the field of investment in the country,” Mulamula said yesterday.

"It is a start also of looking at partnering for investments in the country for the mutual benefit of both parties,” Mulamula added, particularly stressing that the UAE visit was also about enhancing relations between the two governments.

"The areas we discussed were tourism and trade. And tourism was two-fold, in that there is the building of infrastructure as well as getting more tourists to come here.”

On trade, Mulamula noted that Rwanda was currently exporting coffee and tea and was still looking to improve on her exports to UAE and also increase on the volumes.

"We have a shortage of hotels in the country. The demand right now is approximately 6,000 rooms and right now, we have about 3,000. There is a need to build more hotels”.

"All they (UAE visitors) were saying is, ‘we are available to work with you’ and, as RDB, we are going to follow up on that definitely.”

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