The Capital Market Authority (CMA) of Rwanda hosted a strategic planning roundtable designed to introduce the process of developing a ten-year capital market development master plan (CMMP). The event that took place from October 14-16, 2015, in Rubavu District, Western Province, brought together international and regional experts as well as top Rwandan Officials from the public and private sectors.
Present during the meeting were renowned capital market experts from 14 countries across the globe that included the 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 explained that “Rwanda invited capital market experts from around the world to share lessons on how to develop 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 explained 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 CMMP is expected to position the capital markets to play a pivotal role in mobilizing long-term funding to support the development of Rwanda.”
Sunil Benimadhu, Chief Executive of the Stock Exchange of Mauritius (SEM) hailed Rwanda for starting the development of the 10-year CMMP and said that Mauritius looked forward toa partnership with Rwanda’s capital market in the future.
Rwanda’s Capital Market Authority was established on 28 March, 2007, by the Prime Minister’s Order to initially guide the development of a capital market in Rwanda. It was previously referred to as the Capital Market Advisory Council (CMAC) until June 9th, 2011whenit became known as Capital Market Authority (CMA) by law N°11/2011 of 18/05/2011..CMA has facilitated the creation of the Rwanda Stock Exchange (RSE) as a stock exchange and admitted 10 brokerage houses across East Africa.
The Rwanda CMMP roundtable was made possible by the sponsorship of Financial Sector Development (FSD) programme and the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning.The organization 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.
