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Q: Do you have universities in One of my very first actions was to who wishes to invest in Djibouti. We
Djibouti? gather together all of the adminis- want to ensure that the investors
trative services that were involved in obtain a quick return on their invest-
Of course we do! I was a teacher there the creation of companies and to put ment. Therefore, we put everything
for twelve years and I taught mainly them in the same geographical loca- in place to make them happy.
economics and occasionally law. I am tion. In this one place you will find
an economist by training. all that it takes to start a business. Q: What about the free flow of
If you are working in the informal capital?
Djibouti is currently an LDC -- a sector this is also the place to forma-
least-developed country, a poor little lize your company and take advan- Djibouti has had a liberal economy
country -- and we know that what we tage of a number of services, such as since its independence and there
do now must be multiplied by ten to access to the social security system, is no problem. Whoever invested
make it very visible. If we say we want etc. Our informal sector is quite big in Djibouti can repatriate profits
to build a port, one is not sufficient. and it's important to include it into without a problem. We have a conver-
the mainstream of economic life. tible currency linked to the U.S. dol-
The geo-political situation between lar. It is a very open economy.
Ethiopia and Eritrea helps us a lot. Once a business is established, it
When the war between Ethiopia and should not be left alone. Often it Regarding money laundering and
Eritrea broke out in 1973, Ethio- needs to be supervised so as to have being aware of terrorist organiza-
pian maritime trade shifted towards access to loans, and especially to tions, we do of course want to know
Djibouti. Business exploded. The foreign investors. For instance, if who the investor is and whether he
President of the Republic had the today an investor comes and says I has a sound signature. It is difficult
vision that we must prepare our port need to create a ten-hectare indus- to bring dirty money into Djibouti as,
infrastructure, taking into account trial pole, someone must be there to like everywhere else, we have signed
the needs and requirements of our assist him or her to identify a piece of agreements with the United Nations
neighbours. The entire infrastruc- land, how much it costs, etc. and other international institutions
tures that we put in place became concerning this problem.
saturated shortly after its intro- We also want to give the potential
duction. This is the reason why investor a chance to be well informed Q: Is there another field close to
we enlarged the port facilities at before coming to Djibouti and for this your heart?
Doraleh. In addition, we have impro- reason we are currently setting up a
ved the roads leading to Ethiopia. webpage where he or she can find all I am a delegate minister of commerce
the requirements and the necessary responsible for small and medium
To sum up, our economy is mainly information, etc. enterprises, crafts, tourism and for-
related to the infrastructures of busi- malization, and I'm very interested in
ness and transport services, and it re- Q: So how much time does it developing the crafts sector.
presents roughly about 40% of GDP. take to start a business?
We have very good craftsmen in Dji-
We have good political leadership, At present we have not given any bouti. Unfortunately, they are not
with a President who has a dynamic specific time, but when we will have very visible in the economic land-
vision. He says: "today we will do had the experience of 100 companies, scape, and this is the reason why we
this", and then we do it. Similarly, he we will be able to make an estimate are planning to construct a village
decided to develop the regional poles of time. We already reduced the time reserved for craftsmen. If you look at
and this work continues with each re- from approximately thirty days to Senegal, crafts represent 10 to 15% of
gion being competitive. We are put- four days. Now we think that once the GDP. One of the missions of our de-
ting in place regional clusters and are webpage is operational and that the partment is to formalize this sector.
currently investing in human capital services are all located in one place, it The craftsman is someone who just
to train people. We are indeed doing would be about seven or eight hours. evolved out of any system. It could be
a lot of things to develop our country. Our model is based upon the one you a woman who makes cloth, but you
find in Rwanda, where it takes this will never see her -- she's invisible.
Then there is the energy sector, and amount of time to set up a company. On 27 June, this year, we organized
the link with Ethiopia -- something We hope that shortly our administra- Artisan Day for the first time in the
that will give us a chance to have an tion will be able to do the same. country's history. The old city was
adequate electricity supply at lower full of craftsmen and women selling
cost. Q: What do you offer to investors? their wares. It was a tremendous suc-
cess and even the First Lady honou-
Q: What do you do to encourage For foreign investors it all depends red us with her presence.
the development of the local how much they are prepared to invest
economy? in Djibouti. Concerning exoneration Leaving this dynamic minister to
regimes, if the amount is over 50 mil- his endeavours and his busy sche-
Upon taking office, one of the first lion Djibouti francs the incentives are dule, we wish him lots of success in
things I wanted to do was to improve even better -- fiscal, land, taxes, im- all his undertakings, and hope to see
the business climate in Djibouti and port and VAT exonerations. There are Djibouti on the tourist destination
to facilitate the creation of companies. quite a lot of measures for an investor maps shortly.

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