Special team to study gap in FDI

A special team will be established to study the gap between registered projects and operating projects and advise the government accordingly. The team will be comprised of the private sector, the Ministry of Trade and Industry as well as development partners. It comes after government recorded low Foreign Direct Investments despite registration of many projects. According to the Minister of Trade and Industry, Francois Kanimba, the initiative is a request from development partners. “It’s a backward study requested by our partners in development, especially those intervening in private sector development,” Kanimba said. The study will be looking into projects registered in RDB and the actual projects on ground, give explanations on the gaps and advise where necessary, targeting to refer the study in the next review due in April 2012. Information from the Ministry indicate that in the year 2010, out of 105 registered investment projects only 61 were operational, while during in first half of 2011, 14 out of 62 registered projects are operational. According to the Ministry of Trade and Industry, newly-registered FDIs totalled US$498m in the last 12 months. The Dutch Ambassador to Rwanda, Frans Makken, pointed out that there is a need for private sector to actively engage actors in the sector noting that more interaction would help to identify their needs. He mentioned that 50 companies expressed interest to invest in Rwanda during the Netherlands Rwanda investment forum held in the Netherlands. Many of them, he said, have been in the country to study the market. Makken noted that different strategies that aim at private sector development need to be consolidated if they are to be effective and create synergy. Dmitry Gershenson, the IMF Country Representative said that Rwanda still has the lowest FDI’s in the region. “It’s not to say that nothing is being done, Rwanda has every thing it takes to invest in a country but it has natural disadvantages thus attracting investors is not an overnight event rather it is a process,” he clarified. He mentioned some of the natural disadvantages including little natural resources, far from the port, size of the market and expensive cost of skilled labour. Ends

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Special team to study gap in FDI