Sound economic management the way to go

Many Rwandans have in the last few years seen an overhaul of their fiscal behaviour. They have turned to the sophisticated world of stock exchange and treasury bonds, widely adopted the mobile and plastic money mode of payment. When many blue-chip companies started listing on the stock exchange, they must have been surprised by the rate of the offers they received; the demand was so high that there was no enough stock to go around. This week, the government put a Rwf5 billion treasury bond on the market and suffered the same positive fate; it was gobbled up in no time, in financial lingo, it was oversubscribed by 232 per cent. This is not unique to the domestic market. A few months ago, when the government made its maiden venture into the Euro bond market, it needed to raise $400 million to finance infrastructure projects, it got more than it bargained for when it was offered eight times the amount. This show of confidence has now given the government more courage for another $1 billion bond sometimes next year, and it is sure to raise the amount with no trouble. All this confidence is a sign of sound economic management that should be emulated in other government departments. If budget managers, especially in local government, could exercise similar diligence, cases of waste and misuse, unaccounted for expenditure that always seems to come up in the annual Auditor General’s report would be history.

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Sound economic management the way to go