FOR THE last couple of years, Rwanda has been doing extremely well in the World Bank Doing Business Report that has helped attract many foreign investors. The government has been pulling out all the stops in order to create conducive business environments which have entailed drastic business reforms across the board. Of the ten performance indicators, three areas have been a headache to economic policy makers in the past and the government has made them its priority. Trading across borders, resolving insolvency and dealing with construction permits have been scoring less than average, but now, it seems, one of them will no longer hold back performance; the time it takes to acquire building permits. With the new mobile payment system, that follows close at the heels of online application, the process of acquiring a construction permit will now take only 25 days, down from an average of 104 days and at a highly reduced price of Rwf60, 000. These new reforms will no doubt improve the country’s performance in the next Doing Business report, but most importantly they will attract investors in the construction industry since most of the obstacles will have been addressed. The next focus for Rwanda Development Board and its stakeholders is to give more attention to the remaining fields, and going by past examples, where political will and sound policies have played a major part in improving the business environment, it will be a matter of time before the issues are dealt with.
