Kigali — The Prime Minister, Bernard Makuza, will today present before both Chambers of Parliament, the government’s programme for the next seven years

This will be the first time the Prime Minister will be making a presentation of the government plans, before the public.

Speaking to The New Times, yesterday, the Premier said that the programmes to be promoted include good governance, social welfare, justice, economic development and others geared towards improving the lives of the Rwandan people.

“Over the next seven years, the Government’s programmes will focus on elevating Rwanda from being a poor country to a middle income country,” he said.

The Prime Minister added that, the government’s programs were based on what the Rwandan people had asked for and what President Paul Kagame had promised during the just concluded Presidential campaigns.

“The Government is going to put in more effort to improve the lives of its people and accelerate achieving the targets according to Vision 2020,” he added.

Augustin Habimana, the Parliamentary spokesperson, said that the Prime Minister’s presentation is one of the provisions of the latest constitutional amendments.

“Some provisions during the last amendment of the constitution require the Prime Minister to table government programmes in Parliament,” said Habimana.

MPs and Senators are expected to scrutinize Makuza’s paper before endorsing it for implementation.

Last week, Rwanda president Mr. Paul Kagame was sworn in for a second seven year term in office. The president with a group of young liberators, fought a protracted war to fend off genocide and civil war. Today the RPF is heading one of the fastest growing economies in the region. This geographically small nation, has posted 7.1% GDP average growth since 2004.

Mr. Kagame, who has headed this strong economy for the past 10 years, needs more effort and support in sustaining this growth throughout his second term in office (2010-2017).

During his second term in office, the issues that he needs to address are helping the private sector access short and long term financing. Long term financing would trigger much needed development to maintain the current growth rate and grow a vibrant and sustained private sector to drive the economy towards the country’s Vision 2020.

Under the Vision 2020, Rwanda wants to become a middle income economy. However, access to capital for existing and start up Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) remains a huge challenge, which could slow the realization of this vision.

Long-term finances are also needed to finance mortgages and leasing which are crucial in creating wealth. For instance, coffee farmers who are using bicycles acquired through leasing indicate the metal horse has changed lives of the people in the rural areas. The farmers are able to deliver the fresh coffee seeds at washing stations in time and this in turn gives them premium prices.

This has improved the quality of coffee Rwanda exports and coffee has become the second foreign exchange earner after tourism. Examples like these ones and many other bigger, bolder and grandeur approaches need to be addressed in the next seven years in order to address to stimulate growth and development.

The government should come up with more practical measures to bring down lending rates in commercial banks for businesses to access short and long-term financing. Rwanda’s financial institutions should seek partnerships with strong foreign lenders and come up with joint projects on the local market.

Rather than waiting for protracted international negotiations [3], Rwanda is continuing to implement its own reforms to improve domestic business conditions and to become one of the world’s most business-friendly economies. This was bolstered by recent news that it will now take just one hour to set up a new business, at very little cost [4]. The rewards of freeing up business continue to be significant: foreign investment has increased five-fold in the last few years and growth remains strong, in spite of the global contraction. Rwanda is now considered the 5th best economy in Africa in which to “do business” [5].

This very good news can be immediately contrasted with Rwanda’s monolithic neighbour in East Africa. For instance, 149 days and almost four year’s average wages are required to register a business in Democratic Republic of Congo [6]. The DRC, like many other African countries, can learn from the emerging economic success story that is Rwanda.

However, despite the positives there is much room for improvement. A recent World Bank appraisal [7] of the East African Community (EAC) found that practices varied greatly within the region. For example, in Rwanda (as with 12 other sub-Saharan African economies) there is still no procedure for dealing with bankruptcy. Positive reforms require independent and transparent institutions, including an independent judiciary capable of dealing with insolvency. Limiting the role of the increasingly powerful [8] President, Paul Kagame, is equally important to quell legitimate fears about corruption and mismanagement. In both regards Rwanda has a long way to go.

Yet the potential of continuing on the path of reform is tantalising: If the best practices were adopted across the East African Community its members (Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda) would collectively rank 12th in the world in terms of business-friendly conditions—better than, say, Japan or Sweden. Mauritius and Botswana have proven African economies can compete internationally. Entrepreneurs across Africa must be allowed to prove that they are capable of following suit, but they will only be able to do so if their governments implement the right series of reforms.

Nyarugenge — President Paul Kagame, yesterday, commended the Kigali business community, for their hard work and determination to form cooperatives which have significantly contributed to the country’s economic development.

Kagame made the remarks during his visit to Quartier Commerciale – the commercial hub located in downtown Kigali.

The President said that the purpose of his visit was to thank the business community for the great work, which has resulted in the improvement of living standards.

Kagame said that the government is playing its part by improving infrastructure, increasing access to water and supporting the construction of commercial buildings to facilitate growth.

The President challenged Rwandans to strive harder and ensure that the common goal of the country’s development is attained.

Regarding peace and security, President Kagame noted that every citizen must be vigilant. He, however, assured the thousands of residents who had gathered to meet him that those in charge of security were working hard to make sure all Rwandans are safe.

After interacting with the community and responding to their questions, Kagame toured the Kigali City Towers under construction.

The Engineer in charge of the project, Wang Lei, explained to the President that the building will house a movie theatre, a supermarket on level one and two, a huge commercial centre and a parking yard that will accommodate over 300 cars at a time.

“Do whatever it takes to finish the work on time,” Kagame said. The building is scheduled to open for business in three months’ time.

According to Lei, the project which cost $9.1 million will be a state-of-the-art business facility in Kigali city.

In the latest Ease of Doing Business ranking from the World Bank, one country made a spectacular leap—from 143rd on the list to 67th. It was Rwanda, whose population and institutions had been decimated by genocide in the 1990s. On the World Bank list, Rwanda catapulted out of the neighborhood of Haiti, Liberia, and the West Bank and Gaza, and sailed past Italy, the Czech Republic, Turkey, and Poland. On one subindex in the study, the ease of opening a new business, Rwanda ranked 11th worldwide.

You can see and even smell the signs of Rwanda’s business revolution at Costco, one of the retail world’s most demanding trade customers, where pungent coffee grown by the nation’s small farmer-entrepreneurs is stocked on the shelves. And in Rwanda itself the evidence is dramatic—per capita GDP has almost quadrupled since 1995.

Sidebar IconRwanda: From Genocide to Costco’s Shelves (Located at the end of this article)

This is the kind of change entrepreneurship can bring to a country. As Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, put it recently, “Entrepreneurship is the most sure way of development.” He is not a lone voice: Economic studies from around the globe consistently link entrepreneurship, particularly the fast-growth variety, with rapid job creation, GDP growth, and long-term productivity increases.

You’ll see more palpable evidence of surprising entrepreneurial success stories on the Costco shelves. A few steps away from the Rwandan coffee, you can find fresh fish from Chile, which now ranks second only to Norway as a supplier of salmon. The Chilean fish in America’s supermarkets were supplied by hundreds of new fishing-related ventures spawned in the 1980s and 1990s. A few aisles over are memory USBs invented and manufactured in Israel, a country whose irrepressible entrepreneurs have been supplying innovative technologies to the world since the 1970s. And just around the corner, the Costco pharmacy sells generic drugs made by Iceland’s Actavis, whose meteoric rise landed it, in just 10 years, among the top five global generics leaders.

Rwanda, Chile, Israel, and Iceland all are fertile ground for entrepreneurship—thanks in no small part to the efforts of their governments. Though the companies behind the products on Costco’s shelves were launched by innovative entrepreneurs, those businesses were all aided, either directly or indirectly, by government leaders who helped build environments that nurture and sustain entrepreneurship. These entrepreneurship ecosystems have become a kind of holy grail for governments around the world—in both emerging and developed countries.

Unfortunately, many governments take a misguided approach to building entrepreneurship ecosystems. They pursue some unattainable ideal of an ecosystem and look to economies that are completely unlike theirs for best practices. But increasingly, the most effective practices come from remote corners of the earth, where resources—as well as legal frameworks, transparent governance, and democratic values—may be scarce. In these places entrepreneurship has a completely new face.

The new practices are emerging murkily and by trial and error. This messiness should not deter leaders—there’s too much at stake. Governments need to exploit all available experience and commit to ongoing experimentation. They must follow an incomplete and ever-changing set of prescriptions and relentlessly review and refine them. The alternatives—taking decades to devise a model set of guidelines, acting randomly, or doing nothing—all are unacceptable.

But the government cannot do everything on its own; the private and nonprofit sectors too must shoulder some responsibility. In numerous instances corporate executives, family-business owners, universities, professional organizations, foundations, labor organizations, financiers, and, of course, entrepreneurs themselves have initiated and even financed entrepreneurship education, conferences, research, and policy advocacy. As we shall show later in this article, sometimes private initiative makes it easier for governments to act more quickly and effectively, and all stakeholders—government and otherwise—should take every chance to show real leadership.

To make progress, leaders need practical if imperfect maps and navigational guidelines. From what we know from both research and practice, here’s what seems to actually work in stimulating thriving entrepreneurship ecosystems.

Read full article: http://hbr.org/2010/06/the-big-idea-how-to-start-an-entrepreneurial-revolution/ar/1