The City of Kigali (CoK) has announced four broad reforms in the construction sector that officials hope will boost service delivery and further ease doing business.
The reforms include scrapping fees on land titles to create room for free leasehold titles, simultaneous issuing of occupancy and construction permits and introduction of a toll free line that will link stakeholders with One-Stop Centre.
Others are minimising days required to issue a construction permit from 30 to 21 days, and combining site lay out with foundation excavation inspections so they are also done simultaneously.
The reforms will come into effect within the next two weeks, City officials said.
The annual average fees on land titles was approximately Rwf70,000.
Lilian Mupende , the director of one-stop centre and urban planning at the City of Kigali, reiterated commitment to having simpler, faster and reliable reforms so as to promote efficiency and cut construction costs tremendously thus making it easy to do business in the city.
"The reforms will enable us to further reduce the number of days it takes to issue construction permit from 30 days to a maximum of 21 days using the new approach of 7-7-6, meaning one will be able to have his permit within 21 days unlike the 10-10-10 we are employing," Mupende said.
"Also, issuing both occupancy and construction permits at the same time will save costs and create room a more conducive environment for doing business in Kigali; we will also roll out the use of electronic payments where people will use electronic signatures to pay for their construction permits," Mupende added.
