BUJUMBURA December 6th (ABP) – The Center for Development and Enterprises (CDE-Great Lakes) and the Burundi Development Agency (ADB-ex API), jointly organized on Wednesday December 1 in Bujumbura the second edition of the Great Lakes Economic Summit.
In his speech for the occasion, the interim Director General of ADB, Mr. Désiré Musharitse said that in this context of globalization and sustainable growth, each country must work to identify its priorities and to chart the course that he wants to follow to ensure his growth.
Burundi has designed and implemented socio-economic development strategies such as the economic recovery plan, the strategic framework for the fight against poverty, 1st and 2nd generation and even the National Development Plan (PND) 2018-2027, he added.
That demonstrates the will to develop and ensure the economic growth of the country, he continued, while mentioning, however, that several challenges are still to be taken up, in that case the diversification of the economy, the increase and diversification of production and exports, competitiveness of the private sector, reduction of the unemployment rate, lack of adequate infrastructure and many others.
Those challenges, and many others, are obstacles to improving the business climate and attracting foreign direct investment, he said.
With the business world being a very competitive world, he mentioned, creating an enabling environment for business requires the initiation and continual implementation of legal, regulatory and administrative reforms to improve day by day. up to date and this requires permanent consultations of all actors of the public and private sector.
To do that, the ADB and the CDE have set themselves the task of bringing together more often all stakeholders in the economic world of the public and private sector to debate on various themes in order to propose avenues for reforms in the direction of cleaning up the climate of the three businesses thus allowing the development of the Burundian private sector and the creation of jobs, he clarified.
As for the executive director of the CDE, Aimable Manirakiza, the great economic summit aims to reflect on the importance of restoring economic freedom in the implementation of Burundi’s PND.
The Economic Summit, each year, is the quintessential integration of intellectual minds with economically important agendas with regional and international impacts around local facilitators, he said.
During the panels organized on that occasion, several themes were discussed such as the challenges and advantages of the African Continental Free Trade Area (ZLECAF), the post-Covid-19 economic recovery, the conditions for success of the PND 2018-2027 and so on.