Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) Development Policy.

The Vision of the present Policy is to create a critical mass of viable and dynamic SMEs significantly contributing to the national economic development. Its Mission is defined as follows: To stimulate growth of sustainable SMEs through enhanced business support service provision, access to finance and the creation of a conducive legal and institutional framework. In particular, the Policy is designed to complement a set of existing policies/strategies that aim to increase non-farm employment, develop business and technical skills in the Rwandan workforce, support targeted value-added clusters, strengthen the financial sector, grow the tax base and facilitate investment finance to generate industrial growth.
The Rwanda Development Bank (RDB) was formed to coordinate and combine all services and support for Rwandan private sector development including investment and export support, business registration, environmental and tax advice, free trade zone and IT development and cluster specific programs such as tourism development. RDB's vision to transform Rwanda into a dynamic global hub for business investment and innovation focuses on the macro situation in Rwanda. The RDB provides several specific initiatives to support SMEs, including training programs, networking and moveable asset registration, in addition to working to improve the overall business environment in Rwanda. The broad high-level mandate of RDB makes the groundlevel implementation of SME Programming difficult with existing resources.
Chapter 5 lays down the preferred policy objectives as follows: 1) Promote a culture of entrepreneurship among Rwandans; 2) Facilitate SMEs access to business development services; 3) Put in place mechanisms for SMEs to access appropriate business financing; 4) Simplify the fiscal and regulatory framework for SMEs growth; 5) Develop an appropriate institutional framework for SMEs development.
Amongst the key value clusters, as identified within several existing national plans/strategies that have been prioritized in this Policy, are: General Clusters: Tourism, Agro-processing, Mining, Cut flowers, Packaging; Specific Prioritized Clusters: Sericulture, Cheese; Broad Priority Clusters: Fruits and Vegetables, Dairy Products, Mining.
Chapter 7 provides for the Implementation of the Policy establishing that the Annex contains a detailed Implementation Plan with indicators for monitoring and budget that covers the Policy objectives, the Policy choices, the strategies to achieve the Policy objectives, the time-frame and the responsible implementing agencies for accountability purposes. Chapter 8 establishes that the financial implications of this Policy have been carefully reviewed and the total budget for the implementation of this Policy has been costed. The details are contained in the Implementation Plan.
The text consists of 12 Chapters as follows: Issue (1); Context (2); Vision and objectives (3); Analysis (4); Preferred policy objectives (5); Stakeholder views (6); Implementation plan (7); Financial plan (8); Legal implications (9); Impact on business (10); Impact on equality, unity and reconciliation; (11); Handling plan (12).