BPR-Atlas Mara building under construction. Rwanda is leading in issuing construction permits
Rwanda has ranked 29th most business friendly country in the world by the latest 2019 World Bank’s Doing business report released on Wednesday.
The latest ranking moves Rwanda 11 places up from 41 position last year. The position makes Rwanda the only low-income country to make this performance.
In the region, Rwanda is followed by Kenya which is on the 61st position.
President Paul Kagame, commenting on the results, said: “From 41 we came all the way to 29 in just one year. So things are happening and we should work even harder and smarter and move faster,” Kagame said.
“In fact Rwanda is the only low income country in the top 100, though we do not intend to remain in that low income group for any longer than necessary to get out of that group,” he added – referring to Alibaba Group’s Jack Ma to be helping Rwanda to move forward.
Kagame and Jack Ma had just launched the electronic Trade Platform Africa hub, which will facilitate Rwanda’s Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to access digital infrastructure for doing commerce with services encompassing Training, E-Payment, Tourism.
Meanwhile, the World Bank report says that early 75% of the top 30 are High-Income Countries (HICs) with per annual per capita income above $12,000.
Rwanda remains 2nd in the world for ease of registering property, and 3rd in the world for quality of credit information systems and procedures, according to the report.
In 2018, Rwanda also returns to the list of the top 10 biggest reformers over the previous year, according to the report.
In terms of ease of starting a business, the country improved its rank on ease of starting a business by replacing the electronic billing machine system with free software from the Rwanda Revenue Authority (RRA) that allows taxpayers to issue Value Added Tax invoices from any computer.
According to Rwanda Development Board (RDB), since 2005, the country’s consistent focus on business climate reform has produced the biggest cumulative improvement of all countries measured by Doing Business, rising from a low of 37.4 percent in 2005 where it retained 150 position globally to 77.68 percent in 2018 which gives Rwanda the 29th position.
In real terms, says RDB, it took 354 days on average to register property in 2005, whereas it slashed down to an average of only 7 days in 2018.
The trend also means that it cost the equivalent of 317% of annual per capita income to register a new business in 2005; which went down to less than 15% in 2018.
