Business Environment Reforms: Experience from Rwanda and Georgia
In May and June 2011, representatives of Georgia and Rwanda came to Mozambique to share their experience in undertaking reforms to improve their countries' Doing Business Rankings. These experts are from the two best Doing Business country reformers, Georgia and Rwanda. They shared their countries experience in reforming the business environment. The experts are: Mr. Aleksi Aleksishvili, a former minister of finance and economy of Georgia; and Mr. Tushabe Karim, a specialist from the Doing Business Unit of Rwanda.
The experts produced a report (which can be found in the link below) includes recommendations aiming at improving the business environment in Mozambique.
The Reports emphasizes:
- Leadership and political will—these are fundamental and imperative for the success of any reforms to facilitate and improve business environment. These reforms often are multi-sector and leadership and will are crucial to keep the reform agenda focused and moving forward rapidly.
- Accountability and deadlines — accountability and deadlines are paramount to the success of reforms. Institutions and officials have to be accountable to progress of reforms under established deadlines. It is also important that institutions and officials benefit from assistance but these reforms do not in general require financial resources, which makes them attractive but more demanding of faster action.
- Establishing a coordination unit — a unit should be set to coordinate and ensure a focused reform agenda, institutions deliver their promises, and deadlines are determined and followed up. This unit needs to be in the President’s Office or the Prime Minister’s Office and its head has to have deputy prime minister powers for success.
- Open-mind setting —open-mind setting is critical for reforms. The bureaucracy will be the strongest obstacle to reform trying to protect its powers (hidden or not) as well revenues (legal or illegal, corruption). Reform will have to be pursued on what is really needed and not on what are the current procedures and simplify them. Most of reforms can be easily taken and do not often consume financial resources.
Specific recommendations made by the two experts can be found in their reports, included in the Annex