Rwanda Public-Private Sector Partnership Forum A Forum to Support Public-Private Sector Dialogue Prepared by Charles Gasana for Africa Public-Private Dialogue Workshop, Dakar 2008

Background The GoR through its line Ministry of Commerce, Trade and Cooperatives together with support from dev’t partners find it necessary to take a leading role in making major Private sector reforms Rwanda Private Sector Federation (RPSF) is the key flagship business institution responsible for removing constraints to private enterprise and represent their interests in dialogue with the gov’t. On the hand the RPSF gets some funding from gov’t (30% of its budget) and support in order to: – Build capacity for fostering business reforms for private sector enterprise development in Rwanda – Build capacity for research and engage the gov’t on evidence based policy reforms needed for reducing the cost of doing business in Rwanda – Help GoR achieve its EDPRS targets and MDGs, as well as those of vision 2020

PPD Status Currently The GoR took a lead in creating framework for dialogue under the Rwanda Economic and Social Development Council (RESC) secretariat at the Prime Minister’s office Among other things, the RESC is responsible for; – Providing a framework for improved dialogue and enhanced consensus building around economic reforms – Integrated evidence-based development policy making between gov’t, business community and civil society The RPSF is supposed to make use of the RESC structure to effectively engage the gov’t on key challenges to enterprise development in Rwanda

PPD Status Currently Other opportunities for private sector to dialogue with gov’t include; – The Economic Week: a full week of the President and the private sector that ends with a Presidential Investor Round Table – The Business Policy Conference: an annual event that brings together the senior gov’t officials and private sector is a debate over specific policy reforms pertaining the private sector

Structure and Levels of PPD National Summit RESC Secretariat Development Council Seven Platforms each represented by 2 members from Gov’t, Private Sector & Civil Society 9 Chambers of Commerce make up the RPSF Associations

Major Needed Reforms The specific reforms to be tackled will include; – Limited access to finance – Low levels of technical and business skills – Lack of entrepreneurial culture – Weak infrastructure – High costs of doing business – Lack of access to legal services

Key Challenges Several challenges face the Private Sector in Rwanda, but the most critical include; 1. Lack of capacity or technical skills by the RPSF to prepare position papers to professionally engage the gov’t 2. Lack of capacity to do scientific research or evidence based policy issues that need to addressed 3. The problem of a young RPSF institution whose chambers lack the ability to understand the importance of the Federation 4. This also brings the problem of limited resources to sustain its advocacy and independency