KCB’s Maurice K. Toroitich on V 2020

Rwanda strongly believes that trade can, and indeed must, play a key role in achieving the ambitious targets that Rwanda has set for growth and poverty reduction. Rwanda has initiated a broad economic reform agenda since 1994, establishing the rule of law, providing macroeconomic stability, establishing new economic and financial institutions, privatizing state enterprises, developing human resource capacity and repairing infrastructure. Building on this reform agenda, ambitious targets have been set for growth and poverty reduction in the government’s Vision 2020 and in the PRSP and its second generation Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy (EDPRS). The government has defined a vision of achieving significant progress in social indicators and reducing the share of the population in poverty. However, this vision is not for the government but for the people, not for the leaders but the led and therefore all stake holders must do their part in this journey to the vision 2020. The population through entrepreneurship, small and medium scale businesses, profit-oriented Agriculture, among others, are expected to be at the fore front. Do not just produce good work, but excellent work. The banking sector has a great role to play in realsing the V 2020. It’s on this note that Sunday Times’ Richard Nkubito caught up with Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) - Rwanda’s MD, Maurice K Toroitich, to share some of his views. Below are excerpts; Q. Will you briefly introduce yourself to the Sunday Times’ readers sir? A. I’m Maurice K. Toroitich, the Managing Director of Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB)- Rwanda. KCB-Rwanda is a subsidiary of KCB group which operates in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Sudan. It is basically a regional company. KCB-Rwanda started in December 2008 but on the other hand KCB as a group has been inexistence for over 100 years. Q. What’s your take on V 2020? A. Looking at it from the strategic point of view, vision 2020 is compared to a corporate vision in business. It is all about setting a dream agenda for what you want to become. Vision 2020 is really the key to economic development and prosperity and focuses every one to the key things which must be done. You may be very busy doing things and yet there is no out put. Therefore, vision 2020 helps us to keep on the right track- to put in efforts with a proportionate output. Being a vision, it is a dream, an aspiration. The challenge to all stakeholders is to make sure that the implementation is reached and reached on time. That is; the execution should be urgent and efficient. This vision is not anything we can sit back and say we will achieve whenever and this does not just come like that. It takes what I term as “sweet pain.” Vision 2020 does not talk about anything outside our society, and therefore it’s very possible and practical. However, we, in this part of the world (Africa) do suffer from a disease of doing things halfheartedly. It is high time we did our work with passion and everybody should put in his or her whole passion. Let us not just do good work, let us do excellent work. Q. How does your office translate the vision in its day to day undertakings? A. KCB is a financial institution; on our day to day activities/events are the banking activities. One of the objectives of vision 2020 is to develop a sound financial system and this is where KCB lies. Our daily services and customer care, project the vision which include the following among others; prudence and customer services; the credit services which are geared to those industries that the government has highlighted as priority; environmental protection and good governance do also crosscut our strategies and programs as an organization. Q. One of the key objectives of the vision is for Rwanda to middle class economy by 2020. What is KCB’s role in achieving the noble objective? A. As a financial institution, we do provide investment and savings opportunities. By channeling savings to investment through lending we encourage; development of industry in small and medium enterprises; housing through the mortgage programs; we contribute to the payment system to support trade within the region. The impact of all this is the rise and improvement of welfare and growth. Secondly, we have provided employment and consumer services to the local population which improves the income of the people we deal with. Q. Does the human resource understand the vision? A. Well, we have not work-shopped the specifics of vision 2020. However, as a bank, our services are meant to leave the human resource with the whole idea since their day to day duties are a contribution to the vision 2020. Q. Any challenges so far? As I mentioned earlier, the main challenges include; sustained commitment to actualize the vision 2020 programs. It is usually easy to start but sustainability is the major issue here and human resource capacity is yet another challenge for us. I must also say that vision 2020 was prepared before the current world economic crisis and may therefore have a negative effect in the achievement of the vision’s goals. Definitely the speed and prevalence of the vision will be challenged. Q. What is your message to the entire community as regards the vision? A. Do what you are able to do and do it extremely well. Ends