2015 Is Rwanda’s Year Of Good Performance: Fin Min

Rwanda Finance Minister is optimistic about the country’s prospects going forward and says in retrospect the country will see 2015 as a year of good performance.

Finance and Economic Planning Minister, Claver Gatete, says the country had expected to grow by 6.5 percent but given the results of the first two quarter, Rwanda had relatively grown by 7.3 percent.

“Our projections show us that we will be growing by seven percent by the end of the year. This is good news for us as we work on going back to our high growth rate of eight percent,” Gatete added.

He also said the country was seeing growth in the services sector which had grown significantly (the sector contributes 47 percent of GDP) together with agriculture that currently contributes 33 percent to the GDP.

“Manufacturing is coming up at a very high rate together with construction. Domestic consumption has also been a key driver of the growth improving by 20.6 percent; this means consumption is becoming a big factor,” he said.

“In agriculture, we are concentrating on export crops such as coffee, tea (has grown more than 40 percent by the end of September), flowers and vegetables.”

The positive outlook painted by the Finance Minister confirms sentiments expressed by the country’s President Paul Kagame when he addressed the third Africa Global Business Forum recently held in Dubai.

“Rwanda drew lessons from its tragic history and inspired to be where it is today,” Kagame said.

“We thought we could make the required difference for ourselves. It’s all possible, if Rwanda can come from where it has come from and to where it is now and make the tremendous it has made every country can do the same,” he added.

“Other countries in similar situation can achieve that, it is nothing specific to Rwanda, this demonstrate what is possible if country’s people deal with their unique challenges.”