At the beginning of the year, there were fears that the Kenyan political crisis and the earthquakes would impact negatively on economic performance both on growth and the budget.
A preliminary assessment of performance in the first quarter however shows that the impacts of these events have been relatively minor.

Recently, certain parts of the world have witnessed a wave of gender budget initiatives driven by state and non–state actors, most notably by international organizations such as UNIFEM .

The Government of Rwanda conducted the first ever Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) assessment in 2007.
The PEFA assessment is an external evaluation of Rwanda’s PFM system and practice, and its PFM reform strategy based on the PEFA PFM Performance Measurement Framework of June 2005. The assessment report provided a snapshot of Rwanda’s PFM system performance and the Government recent and on-going PFM reforms.

Sound macro-fiscal and budget policies are critical for making effective use of domestic fiscal revenue and donor aid. In addition, the need to improve the linkage between macro-fiscal reforms and the achievement of MDGs and goals identified in EDPRS cannot be underestimated.

Over recent years, government has intensified Public Financial Management reforms including the enactment of the enabling regulatory instruments namely the Organic Law No. 37/2006 of 12th September 2006 regarding State finances and property, and the associated Ministerial Order No. 002/07 of 15th February 2007 setting out government financial regulations

Kigali , June ,2008

Rwanda is implementing fast paced reforms and organising extensive capacity building initiatives to ensure that the human capital is in place to propel the country towards the national objectives as laid out in Vision 2020.

The Government of Rwanda, through its Agency, the Rwanda Investment and Export Promotion Agency (RIEPA), in collaboration with the East African Community Secretariat and the Regional Investment Promotion Agencies (IPAs) is organizing the first edition of the East African Investment Conference in Kigali, scheduled to take place from 26th to 28th June 2008

Since the adoption of National Decentralization Policy in May 2000, a lot has been done in reforming local government structures and establishing a strong legal framework to avoid confusion in roles and responsibilities and to ensure that decentralized governments have appropriate resources to finance the devolved functions.
This presidential Order was enacted in this endeavor to establish the list of fees charged by Districts and to determine their limits.

The Organic Law on State Finances and Property nº 37/2006 of 12/09/2006 published in the Official Gazette on September 12th, 2006 provides in its article 51 guidelines for the reallocation of expenditures during budget execution. This article is further complemented by aarticle 19 of the financial regulations published in the Official Gazette on 15th February 2007

The budget approved by Parliament at end December 2006 projected total expenditure and net lending at RWF 485.6 billion. This amount included RWF 15.8 billion of contingent expenditures to be financed with additional grants from the external donors. Accordingly, total revenue and grants to finance the budget were estimated at RWF 458.5 billion.