The Private Sector Federation (PSF), the umbrella arm of the private sector in Rwanda has said that it will conduct studies aimed at establishing challenges the business community is facing.

The two studies on budget requirements for private sector and a dialogue with the business community are aimed at ensuring better and organised advocacy.

"Currently we are planning to carryout two studies with intentions to make better advocacy for the private sector,” Vincent Safari, in charge of advocacy department said.

Safari also said the studies are intended to identify more issues affecting the private sector and consider appropriate solutions for them.

"There were usually issues with bureaucracy; long time spent paying taxes and complaints of high taxes. But Rwanda Revenue Authority (RRA) solved this,” he said.

The intensions to strengthen advocacy could be used as a strategy to revive the weak financial backbone of PSF that was deeply affected by the recession, causing a controversial lay off of 35 employees last year.

Safari said that the budget study was intended to compare the budgetary demands to the government budget prescribed for the private sector.

"With the budget study we shall be able to position a paper on government budget for the private sector,” he said.

PSF is faced with building capacity amongst businessmen to improve business skills and therefore sustain the growth of a private sector that largely comprises of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) businesses.

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