Cabinet Secretary for Trade and Industrialisation Adan Mohamed on Tuesday received the chairmanship of Ease of Doing Business Initiative (EDBI) from his Ugandan counterpart Peter Ngategize who has been chair for the last two years.

It is now Kenya’s turn to carry the baton .

EDBI is an initiative of 23 African governments that seeks to open up trade among members. Mr Mohamed vilified Kenya’s low ranking among countries that have put measures to ensure businesses are run easily.

Kenya lies at position seven in Africa, with Mauritius topping the list and Rwanda coming in second. “Kenya has a strong middle class and vibrant private sector which should be increasing competition in the way business is conducted. The only thing that we need is to work on our infrastructure and loosen the requirements needed for opening businesses, to rank higher in the ease of doing business,” Mr Mohamed said.

Attorney General Githu Muigai told participants that the country’s law office has worked on new laws to ease doing business. “We have reformed the company’s law, new insolvency and partnerships laws. We look forward to changing other laws that will make it easy to do business,” Mr Muigai said. He said this while addressing the EDBI conference.