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cro enterprises followed by small (31.7%), medium (11.3%) and large (1.4%). The distribution of business size in the current sample was representative of the private sector in Rwanda as a whole. The current sample included respondents from all nine of RDB’s priority sectors, namely ICT, mining, energy, tourism, manufacturing, construction, agriculture, finance and insurance. The highest representation was from the construction sector (13.7%), followed by ICT (11.9%), e-commerce/logistics (11.7%), tourism (11.7%) and trading (10.4%). Of the five provinces, Kigali was rated most highly as an investment destination with 52.6% of respondents rating it as very attractive and a further 33.1% rating it as attractive. The Southern Province was considered the least attractive investment destination by respondents of the current survey with Perception of provinces.
ix
10.9% rating it as unattractive. Some ground challenges in the Southern province such as low fertility for agriculture, higher poverty rate, and limited infrastructure (water and electricity) may have negatively influenced the province’s perceived attractiveness. Recent
business
performance.
When asked to compare the revenue of their business in 2017 to that in 2016, 31% of respondents indicated that it was higher, 48% that it was about the same and 21% that it was lower. Compared to results of BICS 2010, a smaller percentage of participants reported that business performance was lower than in the preceding year— 21% versus 34% in BICS 2010— while a greater percentage reported that business performance was about the same—48% versus 34% in BICS 2010. As for profit, the highest percentage of participants i.e. 45% reported that profits were higher in 2017 versus 2016 while
36% reported that it was about the same and only 19% reported that it was lower. Together, these results are indicative of healthy recent business performance. Of the twenty challenges participants were asked to rate in terms of how problematic they were, the following emerged as the top five challenges faced by businesses across Rwanda irrespective of location, size and sector of business: Top five national challenges.
• Tax rates (78.4%) • Competition with local businesses for customers (68.7%), • Local demand for product or service (65.7%), • Tax administration (58.9%) and • Access and cost of borrowing money (58.2%). Province-specific challenges. Challenges faced by businesses in each province largely resembled