KARONGI — The Rwanda Development Board (RDB) has asked districts in the Western Province to speed up the formulation of concrete  project proposals  in order to benefit from various sources of  support available.

The call was made during an evaluation exercise in which each district was expected to hand in a project idea in which RDB would find investors to develop.

Only two out of the seven districts in the province have so far handed over concrete proposals.

Rutsiro district indicated that they wanted to start a fruit processing plant, while Ngororero indicated that it wanted to start a cassava processing plant. However  none of the two proposals caught RDB’s attention, because they were not detailed  enough.

"Cassava plays an important role in the local development in terms of job creation but the project proposal handed over has not been detailed.

More data is required to come up with a concrete analysis on cassava production and other forms of information to make the idea bankable,” George Mulamula, the principal Deputy CEO of RDB said.

Mulamula pointed out that a system of integrated statistics collection to harmonise  positive impacts for such project  ideas should be developed by the prospective proponents.

Provincial governor, Celestin Kabahizi criticized district leaders who did not make proposals on time, saying it retards the planned development of the region.

"I suggest that since Ngororero district is poor and has no industries, we concentrate on developing their project ideas by giving them support to do so,” he said.

Kabahizi insisted that the same situation applied to the other districts as they do not seem to  have the capacity to develop very clear and good project proposals. However he suggested that they could learn from periodic workshops on developing proposals which are underway. 

"We recognise the failure to collect standard data and to raise very good ideas but we hope in the near future this will be corrected,” he said.

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