The World Bank’s report on how countries facilitate investment called B-Ready 2024 ranked Rwanda third in the world among countries that facilitate investment.

Rwanda came to that position after Singapore and Georgia.

In this column, there is a review of the laws established for the transfer of investment and how the country helps in enabling investors to use the infrastructure that has been established.

After in 2021 the World Bank stopped the annual report known as ‘Doing Business Report’ due to the errors that had appeared in some of the reports, it republished the report in the same way but it features changes including the new name of Business Ready (B-Ready ).

The World Bank points out that the B-Ready report is very different from Doing Business due to the way it is done and the data collected is higher than the one used in the first one.

B-Ready will also be updated annually based on data provided by expert analysts. It is a report that aims to improve the capacity of the private sector in various ways.

This time it was conducted in 50 countries including developed, low-income and low-income countries and in different parts of the world.

The report is based on three main pillars, which include compliance with the law, the establishment of government services and infrastructure that facilitate investors and facilitate investment.

Rwanda came in third place in terms of ease of investment based on laws and the way the private sector promotes companies or investments, producing infrastructure etc. where it has a score of 81.31%, followed by Georgia with 84.75% and Singapore with 87. 33%

Usually, starting a business in Rwanda takes 32 days for domestic companies and 39 days for foreign companies.

In the second pillar related to the introduction of public services and infrastructure, Rwanda is in the top 10 countries where it is in eighth place with 67.37 points, followed by Slovakia, New Zealand, Hungary, Portugal, Croatia, Singapore and Estonia is the first with a score of 73.31%.

Regarding Law Enforcement, Rwanda comes in 17th place with a score of 70.68% while Hungary leads the column with a score of 78.23%.

Despite this, Rwanda is the country that recorded the history of coming to the top 10 countries in the two pillars of low-income and middle-income countries.

The head of the National Development Agency, RDB, Francis Gatare, who was in the United States of America where the report was released, expressed that Rwanda is happy with its results, stressing that it continues to prioritize the development of the private sector.

He said, “From 2003 to 2023, we have seen the contribution of the private sector to the development of the country at least 40 times to the gross national product, we have seen that the income of a person has also increased by more than 11%. And it continues to grow thanks to the private sector.”

He added, “Every year we have a process of change and reform, in these three years of Doing Business that was suspended, we continued to improve and it had the same results as you can see today in this illuminated report.”

He pointed out that there are three important things that Rwanda has put effort into improving the investment system, which includes creating a dialogue between the government and the private sector, showing public and long-term interests and having a broad vision.

Gatare Francis said that such international reports are very useful for countries because they show where to put efforts and improve what others have done well.

He reiterated that Rwanda has agreed to open its doors to people from all over the world by removing visas to Rwanda that can be cashed upon arrival in Kigali.

Mauricio Cardenas, the former Minister of Finance in Colombia, praised Rwanda’s good standing and continued behavior in facilitating investment.

It is expected that the second B-Ready report will be published in 2025 and will be published in at least 100 countries while it will be published in September 2026 and will be published in at least 180 countries.