Shipping and Maritime Affairs PS Nancy Karigithu has appealed to rising high net worth individuals to diversify their wealth into maritime industry to tap into growing opportunities in international trade.
She said the industry needs heavy investments to help the country achieve its target of “a full blown blue economy”.
About 900 investors joined the dollar millionaires’ club last year, bringing Kenya’s tally to 9,400 high net worth individuals from 8,500 in 2015, according to the Wealth Report launched in Nairobi last week. Dollar millionaires are individuals with wealth in excess of $1 million (about Sh102.62 million).
The report suggested that the super-rich have concentrated their wealth in real estate, financial services, manufacturing, agriculture and mining sectors.
“Some of these billions being put in real estate can be pushed into the maritime sector. You can imagine in Lake Victoria Kenyans hire ships from Tanzania and Uganda. We have not embraced maritime sector,” Karigithu said in an interview.
Karigithu said lack of investments in the maritime cluster has undermined the benefits of the industry, which drives 92 per cent of the country’s international trade.
Among areas the PS has called for investments include ship building and repair, offshore energy mining, port operations, coastal shipping, international shipping, multi-modal transportation and ship registration.

Others are cargo operations, logistics, finance, insurance, engineering and technology services.
She said Kenyans needs to also invest in consultancy services, maritime education and training as well as operation of private ports and terminals.
Kenya’s fishing industry for instance, with an exclusive economic zone annual potential of 350,000 metric tonnes in 2013 would have generated Sh90 billion, but yielded a paltry 9,134 metric tonnes worth Sh2.4 million, she said.
The country’s costs on general trade was an estimated $ 2.3billion (Sh236.5 billion) spent on maritime transport alone, monies pocketed by foreign firms. Demurrage on national oil import bill last year alone was $22.6 million (about Sh2.3 billion).
Karigithu said the state department is keen to revive the country’s shipping industry, but requires support from the business community and stakeholders.
“We have sport fishing tourism. Malindi is the only place in the world that offers the best chance of catching five different billfish species in one day,” she said “We all want to be on land forgetting the benefits in the sea. We need to change our mental aspect.”
Source: The Star

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