The Kenya National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KNCCI) has unveiled a trade portal that will facilitate electronic issuance of ordinary Certificates of Origin (CoO).
A CoO is an international trade document attesting that goods in a particular export shipment are wholly obtained, produced, manufactured or processed in a particular country.
Issuance of the CoO is only done by the KNCCI through a manual process that usually took a minimum of three days.
The web based portal, designed in partnership with Trade Mark East Africa (TMA), will also allow application for membership of KNCCI.
Speaking at the launch Friday, KNCCI chief executive Matanda Wabuyele said the portal will allow users to cut on costs and time spent in acquiring the CoO.
“A customer can apply for a certificate of origin from the comfort of their home/location. In addition it cuts on paper, ink and archiving resources,” he said.
Mr Wabuyele noted that automation of the process came in handy in fighting corruption as it eliminated unwanted privileges and preferential treatment.
In the case of foreign trade, the portal is expected to benefit foreign traders by lowering transaction costs arising from periods of inactivity in the manual processing of formalities for export operations.
It will also allow users to make payments using various means including real time gross settlement (RTGS), bankers cheque, online banking and electronic funds transfer (EFT).
To facilitate the payments, it has been integrated with local platforms such as M-Pesa and Equitel.
Source: Business Daily

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