Rwanda among top 3 easiest places to do business in Africa

Rwanda has demonstrated consistent strong performance in the World Bank Doing Business Rankings in recent years with good progress made across all the key indicators. Following significant changes to the methodology of the World Bank Doing Business Report, Rwanda has been ranked 46^th out of 189 countries in the 2015 report. This presents a strong performance given the widened scope in the new methodology that assesses new areas.

The report is a survey conducted on how easy it is to do business in the country. A high ranking on the ease of doing business index means the regulatory environment is more conducive to start and operate a local firm. In the overall performance, Rwanda is still the best performing country in the East and Central Africa and 3^rd easiest place to do business in Africa (1st is Mauritius which ranks 28^th globally, 2^nd is South Africa which ranks 43^rd).

According to the 2015 Doing Business Report dubbed ”Going beyond Efficiency” which goes beyond assessing normal regulation and also examines quality of regulation, Rwanda has made significant improvements in the following areas:

1. Rwanda made major leaps in Getting credit (moved from 13th to 4th in the world), Dealing with Construction permits (moved from 85th to 34th), Resolving insolvency (moved from 137th to 101st)
2. Rwanda improved greatly in the areas/indicators where we had traditionally registered poor performance.
3. Rwanda’s distance from frontier metric (DTC) went up from 69.40 last year to 70.47 this year. In other words, Rwanda’s business environment as captured by doing business indicators improved as a higher score indicates a more efficient business environment and stronger legal institutions

The CEO of the Rwanda Development Board, Francis Gatare said at the press conference that; “Rwanda has consistently implemented bold reforms to improve the ease of doing business and this has resulted in a significant promotion from 150th globally in the 2008 report to 46th today. We have achieved this mainly through constant dialogue with the private sector to determine their perspectives and needs.”

He added that; “As the theme for this year’s report, Going beyond Efficiency suggests- Rwanda will continue to enhance progress beyond the World Bank indicators to the business and investment climate as a whole. We remain fully committed to ensuring business is at the center of our development agenda.”

Top five Sub Saharan African countries:

5. Mauritius(28)

4. South Africa(43

3. Rwanda(46

2. Ghana(70)

1. Botswana(74)

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