The United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Southern Africa Trade Hub (SA Trade Hub), in partnership with the Lesotho National Development Corporation (LNDC) and the Department of Policy and Strategic Planning, recently conducted an investor roadmap audit in Lesotho.

 

The Investor Roadmap is a tool to help improve a country’s investment climate with regulatory, legislative, and procedural reforms. The USAID SA Trade Hub developed the Investor Roadmap for Lesotho in 2012, making 51 recommendations on areas the country needed to address to enhance its business enabling environment.

 

The first three days of the program consisted of undertaking the actual audit process with a diversity of ministries and key business stakeholders followed by a validation workshop attended by the Minister of Trade and Industry Hon. Joshua Setipa and the Principal Secretary from the Ministry of Development Planning, Lerotholi Pheko.

 

Key reform issues discussed during the audit and workshop included company registration, immigration reform, trading across borders, land issues, and mining procedures. The validation workshop was designed to review preliminary audit findings and to secure buy-in from both the public and private sectors on the resolution of outstanding issues and to determine a way forward.

 

Speaking at the validation workshop, the Minister of Trade the Industry, the Hon. Joshua Setipa commented, “Investment climate reform is a continuous effort… We have to continuously reinvent ourselves. We can’t talk about sustainable economic reforms if the process is not inclusive… Investment decisions are still 40% business sense and 60% perception.”