World Bank Country Manager in Rwanda Omowunmi Mimi Ladipo has just congratulated Rwanda upon another success in doing business.
Ladipo was speaking at the launch of ease of doing business findings compiled in one report titled ‘Doing Business 2012: Doing Business in a More Transparent World’ Report which was jointly done by World Bank and International Finance Corporation (IFC).
In a teleconference and press briefing at World Bank/IFC offices in Kigali this Thursday Ladipo who was accompanied by high profiled Rwandan government officials, announced that Rwanda had emerged 45th country in ease of doing business among 183 countries across the world.
In a middle of applause, Ladipo also said that Rwanda had scooped the 3rd position in Sub-Saharan Africa following South Africa and Mauritius respectively.
Last year, Rwanda had been ranked 58th country in ease of doing business but the new report had indicated that it was on the 50th position which made the Minister of Trade and Industry Francios Kanimba not hold his breath to ask.
Responding to the question from the Minister’s question, World Bank’s official from Washington DC said the new positioning of Rwanda from 58th to 50th was due to new parameters used in this new report which made researcher and analysts fix them in the last year’s survey which consequently put Rwanda in the 50th position.
Despite major reforms Rwanda has earned in doing business, it is still failing largely in delaying contracts(39th) where it has not changed at all, dropping in resolving Insolvency from 163 last year to 165 this year.
Other parameter Rwanda is still failing include protecting investors dropping from 28 last to 29th this year, while registering property falling by 20 positions from 41st last year to 61st this year and fallin by 3 points in dealing with construction permits from 81st position last year to 84th position this year.
However among 10 indices measured, only three of them Rwanda performed very poorly in t5he ranking of Sub-Saharan African countries including dealing with construction permits (13th ), trading across borders (31st ), 36th out of 38 countries in resolving insolvency while the rest of indices performing below 10 indices.
The report has shown that there has been a major progressive reform in doing business for over 43 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
In general the report says the pace of regulatory improvements has picked up across Sub-Saharan Africa and for the past six years, a third of the region’s economies made the improvements to the regulatory climate for domestic firms.
Between June 2010 and May 2011 alone, 36 of 46 governments in the region implemented reforms in at least one of the ten indices in the report.
Meanwhile, other countries in East African Community (EAC) bloc fared well as Kenya ranked the 9th in Sub-Saharan Africa hence the 2nd to Rwanda in EAC, then Uganda on 12th and Tanzania 14th positions respectively.
For the last four year, Mauritius has been beating the rest of Sub-Saharan African countries and being on the 23rd position on Global ranking.
Singapore retained its position as the friendliest place to do business in the world, followed by Hong Kong and New Zealand.
Others in the top 10 were USA, Denmark, Norway, UK, South Korea, Iceland and Ireland, respectively.
The report has indicated that governments in 125 economies out of 183 measured implemented a total of 245 business regulatory reforms — 13 percent more reforms than in the previous year.
Leave a Reply