Rwanda launched sub-Saharan Africa’s first electronic clearing system to slash by half the time cross-border traders spend on official paperwork, speed East Africa Community (EAC) commerce and cut the cost of doing business.
“This is a groundbreaking scheme to cut through the red tape snarling trade and I am confident that it will pave the way for similar systems in other EAC countries as well as making Rwanda an even cheaper place to do business,” Rwanda Revenue Authority Commissioner General, Ben Kagarama said at the Kigali launch.
The $3.3 million scheme called RESW – the Rwanda Electronic Single Window – is a virtual link between government clearing agencies and traders and is expected to cut the amount of time traders spend on goods clearance by 56% and to save traders and businessmen around $9 million yearly on clearance costs.
The Rwanda government developed the system with support from the private organization Trademark East Africa (TMEA), which seeks to help EAC governments modernize trade links and sow prosperity, and by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
TMEA Rwanda Country Director, Mark Priestley said: “we are delighted to be funding this major trade facilitation measure which is anticipated to reduce the time it takes to clear goods by an estimated 3 days or by 40%.
Not only will this bring Rwanda several steps closer to the ports of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and Mombasa in Kenya but will lead to direct savings for business estimated to be $6-9 million a year and introduce greater transparency and accountability into the whole chain of clearing goods.”
RESW will create savings in time due to improved efficiencies of processing and handling information between different stakeholders involved in clearing goods. For example, a clearing agent will no longer need to physically take documents from one agency to another for processing but simply but all information online on a web page.
