Kenyas earnings from the United States horticulture market is set to rise to Sh10billion on direct Nairobi to New York flight scheduled to start in October. Kenya Flower Council chief executive Clement Tulezi said in an interview that the country is currently earning less than a billion from the US market. Earnings from the Horticulture sector hit Sh115 billion last year from Sh101 billion announced in 2016. Companies licensed to export the flowers also increased to 386 from 356 in 2016. The total export volumes increased by 26,303 tons to159,961 tons in the said period while the value rose to 82.25 billion from 70.8 billion. “We also expect that the direct flights would increase our Share of the US market from the current 0.4 per cent to 10 per cent,” Tulezi said. Outgoing head of the horticulture directorate Zakayo Magara said in a separate interview that the flight will open up the flower sector to a market of over 1 billion people. FLOWER EXPO In the forthcoming seventh edition of the International Flower Trade Expo planned to kick off on Wednesday in Nairobi, atleast 10 US firms will be present as buyers. Speaking to the Star, IFTEX chief executive Dick Van said the US firms will be scouting for deals ahead of the Nairobi-New York flights. He said the flights will cut the long process of getting the flowers to US via Amsterdam. Over 90 per cent of all flowers grown in the country will be exhibited at the trade...

President Uhuru Kenyatta yesterday flagged off the first four tracks carrying 600 barrels of oil under the Early Oil Pilot Scheme at the Ngamia 8 oil well in Turkana County. The country is targeting to transport 2,000 barrels per day to Changamwe storage tanks under this scheme. This means the country's first oil exports are expected to begin in December given that it will take at least 400,000 barrels to fill one oil tanker ship. "Today, Kenya becomes the first country in East Africa to export oil. I thank all investors who believe in this project that is expected to turnaround social economic life for not only Turkana and Kenya, but the region at large," he said. The President thanked Turkana county leaders for accepting his invitation to discuss and agree on revenue distribution adding that the agreement would be ratified in parliament this week. Under the new deal, National Government will receive 75 per cent of proceeds from oil exports while the county government will receive 20 and five per cent respectively. The EOPS had been postponed since June 2017 due to disputes over how revenue would be shared. PIPELINE PLANS Last week, Tullow Oil picked Britain firm, Wood to design the proposed Lokichar to Lamu Crude Oil Pipeline. The firm will provide the first phase of front-end engineering (FEED) services, setting the technical requirements and estimating the installed cost for the pipeline system. “We are delighted to be working with the Pipeline Project Management Team on this project...

Kenya’s ambition to become one of the global oil producers was boosted yesterday following the flagging off of the first barrels of the resource destined for Mombasa from Turkana fields. President Uhuru Kenyatta led a host of local leaders to celebrate the feat that enabled the country to join Uganda as the only two oil-producing countries in East Africa. In a historic occasion held at Ngamia 8 oil fields in Turkana East, and attended by Turkana leaders who recently entered a truce with the national government over the sharing of oil proceeds, the President flagged off four lorries ferrying the lucrative resource to the Kenya Petroleum Refinery tanks in the coastal town. 2,000 BARRELS The crude oil is being transported in an experimental programme dubbed Early Oil Pilot Scheme. It will be kept in Mombasa as the country looks for viable international markets. Each truck ferried 156 barrels. The producing company, Tullow Oil, targets trucking at least 2,000 barrels a day. It already has 70,000 barrels stored in tanks in the fields. The oil was drilled from Ngamia 8 field. There are at least eight oil fields located in various sections of Turkana East and Turkana South. Aware of the protracted disagreement on how the proceeds should be distributed, President Kenyatta warned of the curses that could come with the oil. He promised that all concerns raised by residents would be attended to. “The economies of countries that have failed to manage their resources have also suffered the ripple effect...

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya has launched a pilot scheme to export crude oil via Mombasa as part of efforts to capitalize on the country’s oil reserves. The East African country discovered commercial oil reserves in its Lokichar basin in 2012 and a 800-km (500-mile) pipeline is due to be built before production starts up in 2021/22. The national government and the regional administration of the northwestern Turkana region agreed last month on revenue sharing that will come into force when production reaches full capacity by 2022. That agreement paved the way for the passage of a law on petroleum production, which will enable Tullow Oil - which operates the Kenyan fields - to start shipping oil that has been held in storage tanks for a year. “The benefits of the project will be shared and no one will be left behind,” Deputy President William Ruto said at the launch of the export initiative under which 2,000 barrels will be transported to Mombasa by road for shipment each day. Tullow has hired Wood Group to design the pipeline needed to bring crude from Lokichar’s onshore fields to a port in Lamu along the Indian Ocean coast. The cost of the pipeline is estimated at $1.1 billion, with a further $2.9 billion needed for upstream operations, the company says. Tullow has said the Amosing and Ngamia fields in the basin have estimated contingent resources of about 560 million barrels, with plateau production potentially reaching 100,000 barrels per day. Source: Reuters

Kenya has reached out to Botswana, again, in a bid to raise trade volumes that have stayed below targets for both countries two years after they signed a trade deal. Foreign and International Trade Cabinet Administrative Secretary Ababu Namwamba told a forum the two countries should take advantage of cordial political relations to foster business. Mr Namwamba who was speaking at the second Kenya-Botswana Diaspora Investment Forum held on Saturday at Fairgrounds Holdings, Gaborone, said it was disappointing that trade volumes have not improved despite existing transport networks and good ties between the two countries. “We have agreed to revisit a 2016 Memorandum of Understanding that clearly stipulates how our two countries can trade better and increase the volumes which as we speak remain way below potential,” Mr Namwamba said. TRADE DEAL He was referring to the November 2016 MoU signed between Nairobi and Gaborone to build their trade and Investment partnerships in agriculture, agribusiness, Information and Communication Technologies, horticulture and manufacturing among others. This agreement had followed President Uhuru Kenyatta’s June 2016 visit to Gaborone when he attended the Botswana-Kenya Business Forum and held talks with then Botswana’s President, Ian Khama. Yet that deal appears not to have spurred trade volumes. Kenyan sold to Botswana goods worth Sh451 million, according to records available at the Foreign Affairs ministry in 2016. This was nearly half the volume recorded in 2014. Much of the problem has been that both countries trade similar goods. Kenya’s main imports from Botswana are general electricals,...

On May 31, 2018, the eve of the 55th anniversary of Madaraka Day, Kenya marked the first anniversary of the standard gauge railway (SGR), codenamed the Madaraka Express. President Uhuru Kenyatta launched the Mombasa-Nairobi part of the project on November 28, 2013, and flagged off the maiden passenger and cargo trains a year ago, 18 months ahead of schedule. The Chinese dream meets the Kenya dream in the SGR and Madaraka Express, built by the China Road and Bridge Corporation with 90 per cent of the funding from the China Exim Bank and the remaining 10 per cent from Kenya. The SGR is a flagship project under Vision 2030 development agenda aimed at making Kenya a middle income country in the next 12 years. MADARAKA EXPRESS At another level, Madaraka Express reflects China’s “new deal for Africa”. It is also part of President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Beijing’s development strategy that seeks to link and integrate humanity into one inter-connected community of shared future. Like the Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, the railway is Uhuru Kenyatta’s inerasable legacy. When completed, the line will run for a total of 3,200 kilometers (1,989 miles) from Mombasa on the Indian Ocean seaboard to Malaba on the Ugandan border, ultimately ending at the Atlantic Coast. With the Mombasa-Nairobi line (472 km) already completed, work on the Nairobi-Malaba section (520 km) is under way, expected to branch to Kisumu (174 km). Also forming part of this railway network are the proposed Nairobi-Moyale...

Bukoba — THE East African Community member states are poised to ratify laws to control the importation of inferior pharmaceutical and food products, says the Director of Medicines and Complimentary Products under the Tanzania Food and Drugs Authority (TFDA), Mr Adam Fimbo. " Tanzania was the first among EAC nations to have ratified the laws in controlling the safety, quality and effectiveness of food, medicines, cosmetics and medical devices," he disclosed. Other EAC nation will soon follow suit, he added. "Upon completion of this exercise we shall have uniform standards," he said. Mr Fimbo made the remarks recently during a meeting between TFDA officials and representatives of different media outlets from Kagera and Geita regions, as part of enlightening the people in the Lake Zone. He also revealed that TFDA had plans to install special mini-testing labs in all 32 entry points in seven zones to ensure consumers were safe and the market was free of inferior drugs, foods and diagnostics. Various strategies have been put in place that would maintain strict and timely testing of the products with state-of- the art laboratory stationed in Mwanza City as the headquarters in the Lake Zone area comprising six regions-Simiyu, Kagera, Mwanza, Geita, Shinyanga and Mara. He cited, for instance, that the Post Marketing Surveillance programmes (PMS), which between January and March this year, had handled 594 samples of human drugs it collected and tested and found that 96 per cent of them met the required standards. He urged the media to...

A new fund targeting women-led businesses in Africa will invest up to $500 million over the next decade to increase their participation in investment. The African Women’s Leadership Fund is a brainchild of the United Nations Economic Commission on Africa (Uneca), UN Women, the African Union Commission and the African Women Leadership Network. Uneca executive secretary Vera Songwe said that the Fund’s sponsors hope to address a significant gender imbalance in finance and investment. “Women are less represented in many organisations and very few are leaders. This in turn makes them less represented in key decision-making for the continent,” said Ms Songwe. In Africa, only five per cent of chief executives are women; 18 per cent of businesses lack women in senior roles; only 29 per cent are senior managers while 44 per cent of women hold line roles, a 2016 report by Mackinsey & Company notes. The fund’s strategy is to ensure that at least 65 per cent of its investment capital reaches women entrepreneurs and women-led companies. The rest — 35 per cent — will go to technical assistance in the form of capacity building, leadership training, mentorship and business development. The fund hopes to find emerging women managers who will eventually serve as examples of the potential that they and their peers could have if given the support they need. The fund covers each of the continent’s five regions — North Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, West Africa, and Southern Africa — and will evolve over time...

All consolidated cargo will be subjected to mandatory inspection in the country of supply starting tomorrow in a move aimed at weeding out substandard goods, the taxman and the bureau of standards has announced. In a statement Thursday, the Kenya Bureau of Standards (Kebs) and the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) warned cargo consolidators and the general public that all cargo arriving into the country without a certificate of inspection shall not be allowed into the country. Consolidated cargo refers to a wide range of products or general merchandise imported in small quantities or parcels belonging to several traders who have pooled or assembled together with their parcels to form one consignment. “We wish to inform cargo consolidators and the general public that all consolidated cargo shall be subjected to mandatory in the country of supply starting June 1. “All cargo consolidators who applied for registration and fulfilled the requirements for registration are advised to contact Kebs for their provisional registration certificate by May 31, to facilitate inspection of their cargo under route D of Pre-Export Verification of Conformity (PVoC) programme,” said the notice. Last month notice Kebs issued a notice last month to all importers of consolidated cargo for both air and sea to register with the agency to have their goods inspected under a new procedure created in 2005 by the standards agency and KRA. The new procedure, which has seen 20 firms approved to import as consolidators, targets cargo containing a wide range of products. It also targets...

Arusha — The East African Community (EAC) has denied it is negotiating with China on a free trade agreement (FTA) proposed by the Asian economic giant. "Currently, there is no EAC-China FTA and no negotiations have begun, in this regard," an EAC official told The Citizen on condition of anonymity since she was not authorised to speak to the media on policy matters. She said recent reports on purported discussions on free trade between the EAC and China were due to "miscommunication". The official nevertheless confirmed that China had proposed to negotiate with EAC partner states a comprehensive FTA in order to boost trade volumes between the two sides. China, currently the world's second biggest economy, had also requested for a joint feasibility study with the community on the proposed trade arrangement. "This matter was considered by the EAC Council of Ministers in early 2016," the official said. She noted, however, that in view of similar requests received from other countries such as Turkey and Singapore, the EAC secretariat decided to undertake a study on implications of such negotiations. The study will inform the Council of Ministers, which is the policy organ of the EAC, on the way forward and subsequent response to requests by China and other foreign countries. "In this regard, the secretariat communicated with the concerned parties that the EAC was to undertaking internal consultations on their proposals and would revert after consultations are finalised," the official said. In June, last year, the EAC secretariat approved a...