The Minister of Local Government, James Musoni, has urged local leaders in the country to focus on socio-economic development of the country.

He made the remarks, yesterday, during a meeting with Executive Secretaries from Sectors, Districts and Provinces to discuss ways of improving public financial management and service delivery at the local levels.

"Your role is very critical as grassroots leaders...you need to focus on the social economic transformation because we want our country to move from being a third world economy to a middle-income economy,” he told the leaders.

He added that it is possible for Rwanda to move another step in terms of development if there is improved service delivery at the local levels.

"We have achieved a lot, including unity and reconciliation and the Nine-Year Basic Education, among other programmes; Therefore,  for the country to become a middle income country, a strong partnership between the citizens and the leaders is needed,” he pointed out.

"Now that we have almost everything necessary for us to move to the next stage, we are going to prioritise the areas of planning and budgeting, especially in local government, to concentrate on the activities that promote productivity, employment opportunities, export promotion and import substitution strategies.”

He explained that they want citizen participation, respect for human rights and ruling justly in order to fast track the country’s ambition and ideas towards achieving socio-economic development.

He advised the local leaders not to get involved in any form of graft adding that government had declared a war on corruption.

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