KIGALI, Rwanda – Rwanda’s Finance and Economic Planning Minister, Amb. Claver Gatete has said Rwanda wants to become the top regional hub for services.

“We aim at becoming the services sector hub for the region, but that does not mean we have any intentions to abandon the industrial sector,” Gatete said recently.

He was speaking during the dissemination flagship publication for the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the Economic Report on Africa 2015 held in Kigali

The theme was, ‘Industrializing through Trade’, something the Minister said was extremely relevant to one of the development challenges on the African continent.

“Rwanda is a strong believer in industrialization and regional integration and that’s why the country has been participating in efforts within the East African Community (EAC) to reduce or eliminate barriers to trade both tariffs and non-tariff barriers but also in Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), but in the future the Economic Community for Central African States (ECCAS).”

“This report covers a lot on ground in the subject matter which has many implications for the public policy,” Gatete said.

UNECA over the past years has been a strong advocate of giving priority to industrialization in Africa and the accompanying concept for structural transformation.

Gatete said, “This report is a ritual, but also highly ambitious on the ground it covers hence gives out more in-depth discussion about the right policies to facilitate greater trade and foster industrialization in Africa.”

“Such discussions should not be about the importance of industrialization for Africa or the significant role of trade in general or intra- Africa trade in particular can play in fostering the industrialization.”

“But instead they should focus on what it will take at a regional and continental level for the desired industrialization and the conducive type of trade to happen in practical terms, the implications of the report findings and recommendations in our own regional communities specifically one of the EAC and the ECCAS and how to get them on board, and what it mean in terms of policy reforms and sequencing for a country like Rwanda,” Gatete said.

He said initiatives such as the Northern Corridor Initiative of the EAC which has helped reduce time, and costs involved in trading among the three countries, has generated more revenues for the region. He said this should be happening on the African continent as a whole.

“Rwanda has plans of creating over 200,000 jobs which are off-farm in nature annually and therefore that is why industrialization remains so critical and very important to all of us here in Rwanda,” he said.

“For Africa to be able to address its problems of lack of employment, poverty it requires a very dynamic industrial sector and for this to happen, trade has a role to play,” Antoine. M.A. Pedro, Director, Sub-Regional office for Eastern Africa (SRO-EA), UNECA said.

According to Pedro, there are a couple of steps to achieve that such as having clear policies and visions about industrialization through trade.

“It also identifies the enabling factors beyond policies and visions some of them have to do with the importance of having the right infrastructure that can facilitate trade, it also underscore the importance of having a productive sector that can produce something to be able to trade, among others,” he said.

He said, “In addition to that it goes back to the message that they have conveyed already in their report in 2013 which is making the most out of commodities”.

“This recognizes the importance of natural resources sector in our trade, saying that we need to maximize value addition so that we do not trade raw materials,” Pedro said.

Source: East African Business Week

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