Rwanda’s 10-year Capital Market Master Plan in the offing

Kigali, Rwanda, Capital Markets in Africa — The Capital Market Authority of Rwanda hosts a strategic planning roundtable designed to initiate the process of developing a ten-year capital market development master plan (CMMP). The three-day off-site meeting brought together international and regional experts as well as high-level Rwandan officials from the public and private sectors.

Among the delegates were renowned capital market experts from 14 countries across the globe who were in the roundtable they included: USA, Israel, India, Malaysia, Spain, UK, Netherlands, Uruguay, Mauritius, South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia and Tanzania.

The Chairperson of the Rwandan capital market authority who is also the Executive Director of the Center for Financial Markets at the Milken Institute, Ms Staci Warden speaking to the press at the end of the roundtable stressed that “Rwanda invited capital market experts from around the world to share lessons on how to develop the Rwanda’s capital market. The idea is to create an ecosystem to accelerate and sustain economic growth that leads to more savings and investments via the capital markets.”

She further stressed that “Investment to be channeled to companies will help them grow bigger, hire more people, more people have more savings and they have more money to invest.”

Rwanda’s Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Ambassador Claver Gatete who graced the roundtable noted that Rwanda has made major strides in socio-economic and financial sector development in recent years, but will require deeper, more liquid capital markets to channel foreign and domestic savings to support the socio-economic growth of Rwanda.

He added that “The 10-year Capital Market Master Plan will cement efforts by the CMA to position Rwanda’s capital markets as the preferred financial economic centre for domestic, regional, and international fund flows. The 10-year Capital Market Master Plan is expected to position the capital markets to play a pivotal role in mobilising long-term funding to support the development of Rwanda.”

Sunil Benimadhu, the Chief Executive of the Stock Exchange of Mauritius (SEM) hailed Rwanda for starting the development of the 10-year capital market master plan and said that Mauritius look forward to a partnership with Rwanda’s capital market in the future.

The Capital Market Authority (CMA) was established by the Government of Rwanda to nurture wealth by facilitating the development of an orderly, fair, transparent and efficient capital market in the country.

The organisation of the roundtable was unique by design as consultants will now start the process of drafting the master plan with inputs from experts at the meeting.

The Rwanda capital market master plan roundtable was made possible by the sponsorship of Financial Sector Development (FSD) programme and the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning.