Kenya seeks to remove barriers to doing business
Source - Nairobi Reuters

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya is trying to remove bottlenecks that have weighed down business and stopped the east African country from achieving its full economic potential, a senior government official said on Tuesday.

"Kenya has continued to rank poorly on a global scale in the indicators for doing business. It is essentially a manifestation of a poor business environment," David Nalo, Kenya's trade and industry permanent secretary, said.

"The main focus is improving the investment climate through reforms of the business environment so as to increase investor confidence and attract new investment."

Nalo was speaking at a function where Kenya's ministry of trade released a five-year strategy for attracting more investment through improving infrastructure, boosting efforts to combat crime and to enforce stiffer anti-corruption measures.

President Mwai Kibaki's government, which came to power in late 2002, has been highlighting its economic achievements ahead of elections later this year but analysts say corruption, weak regulatory policies and crime remain major problems.

Kenya's economy, east Africa's biggest, has been chalking up strong gains and officials predict it grew by more than 6 percent last year from 5.8 percent the previous year.

But experts said the Kenya government must do more to encourage the private sector to operate more freely.

"The current multiplicity of regulatory and legal institutions imposes costs on the private sector and hinders private sector investment," Raphael Mwai, a local expert said.

"This increases the cost of doing business," Mwai told participants at a conference aiming to boost private investment.