Why Rwanda Keeps Attracting Foreign Investment

Despite a mild ranking decline for ease of doing business, Rwanda is still making notable strides and attracting more and more foreign direct investors because of how easy one can start a business in the country.

In the World Bank Group report, Doing Business 2016, Rwanda ranked 62 out of 189 economies in ease of doing business and 111 out of 189 economies in the ease of starting a business further encouraging investor confidence.

“I think first and foremost it’s a business environment which is operating under the very transparent mechanisms and very little bureaucracy in public places and ease of access to information,” said Capital Markets Authority Executive Director, Robert Mathu.
 
Mathu says the East African country is attracting more investors compared to other emerging markets is also because of its geographic location he said, with Rwanda being around a lake area is something it can hedge on.

“From my perspective, Rwanda becomes attractive because of the big wins that have been coming out, I mean the ease of doing business in Rwanda, how fast appropriate legislation is put in place and of course the ongoing reforms which, so far, have delivered a lot of growth driving features of an operating environment.

The Rwandan bond market is also showing promise with a bond for over 15 billion rand and francs to be offered in the market for infrastructure which is expected to be oversubscribed.

“We expect that it will be oversubscribed because there is demand and the market is young and you find that a number of institutional investors have got very limited options in terms of diversifying their investments – so every time a bond is issued, especially of that size, it’s like to be oversubscribed,” said Mathu.