... as a 10bn/- project for two bus terminals in Arusha is on the drawing board as part of a drive to add a notch to Arusha as the seat of the East African Community (EAC), its civic leadership is in the process of establishing two large bus terminals here, which will link all six member states of the regional bloc by a road network. The project cost is estimated at around 10 billion/- . The Arusha City Director, Mr Athumani Kihamia has revealed that locations for the proposed terminals had been earmarked, Moshono being the envisaged host of the larger one, to cater for buses traveling between Arusha, Nairobi and Mombasa (Kenya) as well as Kampala (Uganda), plus linking the region with Dar-essalaam, Tanga and Morogoro. The second one will be constructed in Olasiti Ward and become the main station for passenger vehicles traveling between Arusha and Kigali (Rwanda), Bujumbura (Burundi) via the Great North Road which connects Cape Town (South Africa) to Cairo (Egypt). The station will also serve routes linking the northern zone with the lake zone regions (Mwanza, Shinyanga, Simiyu and Kigoma) as well as Manyara, Dodoma, Singida, Tabora and Iringa as well as southern highlands regions. "We have written to the President's Office (Regional Administration and Local Government (TAMISEMI) seeking permission for applying for loans in the range of 10 billion/- from the African Development Bank (AfDB) to fund the proposed projects," said Mr Kihamia, adding that the works at Moshono would commence in March....

The world’s largest container shipping firm A.P. Moller-Maersk is teaming up with IBM to create an industry-wide trading platform it says can speed up trade and save billions of dollars. The global shipping industry has seen little innovation since the container was invented in the 1950s, and cross-border trade still leaves an enormous trail of paperwork and bureaucracy. Success of the platform, which will be made available to the ocean shipping industry around mid-2018, depends on whether Maersk and IBM can convince shippers, freight forwarders, ocean carriers, ports and customs authorities to sign up. Blockchain technology powers the digital currency bitcoin and enables data sharing across a network of individual computers. It will help manage and track tens of millions of shipping containers globally by digitizing the supply chain process from end to end, the companies said. “The big thing that is missing from this industry to digitize and unleash the potential of the technology is really to create a form of utility that brings standards across the entire ecosystem,” Maersk’s Chief Commercial Officer Vincent Clerc said in an interview. A shipment of refrigerated goods from East Africa to Europe can go through nearly 30 people and organizations and involve more than 200 different communications, according to Maersk. Documentation and bureaucracy can be as much as a fifth of the total cost of moving a container. “There is a strong push from the end-customer to see this change. We may meet initial resistance form one part of the ecosystem,” Clerc...

1.Kenya-Tanzania Highway Construction work on the US $751.3m Kenya-Tanzania Highway is set to begin in 2018. The African Development Bank (AfDB) is currently looking for financial partners capable of investing US $385.2m towards the construction of the highway connecting Kenya and Tanzania. The 445km Malindi-Bagamoyo highway begins from Malindi and moves through to Mombasa and Lunga Lunga on the Kenyan side. the highway will then cross into Tanga, Tanzania through Pangani and Saadani to Bagamoyo. 2.Lamu-Isiolo Road Construction of the 537-kilometre Lamu-Garissa-Isiolo is one of the biggest construction projects in Kenya road will start in June2018 and be completed in 2022.The project will cost Sh62 billion. The loan to fund the road construction has a repayment period of 13 years. The project, which is part of the Lamu Port South Sudan Ethiopia Transport Corridor, will be financed by a consortium of international investors led by the Development Bank of South Africa. 3.Ngong road dualling The Ngong road dualling is Sh3 billion project. The tender is set to be awarded anytime from now. The contract will be awarded to the lowest bidder. Expansion work for the 3.4-kilometre road is expected to start in March and run for two years. Japanese firm World Kaihatsu Kogyo upgraded the stretch between Kenya National Library and Prestige Plaza to a dual carriageway, the first phase of the road expansion plan. 4.Mombasa port expansion ( Phase 2) The project involves construction of the second phase of the second container terminal at the Mombasa port. The work was...

Kenya wants to use the East African Legislative Assembly to push for free movement of skilled labour and integration in the region. Nine representatives at the EALA’s Fourth Parliament are currently on a four-day retreat in Naivasha to iron out Kenya’s top agenda ahead of sittings resumption next Monday. MPs Simon Mbugua, Kennedy Kalonzo, Oburu Oginga, Wanjiku Muhia, Mpuru Aburi, Fatuma Ibrahim, Abdikadir Aden, Aden Noor and Florence Jematiah are attending the orientation retreat, which started on Sunday. Speaking to the Star yesterday, Mbugua, the chairman of the Kenyan chapter at the EALA, said President Uhuru Kenyatta’s agenda will be pushed through liberalisation of free movement of skilled labour. “Uhuru has set the pace for other Presidents in the East African Community,” he said. Customs Union Mbugua said they will also push for the consolidation of the East African Community Customs Union with the aim of expanding the list of goods under the Single Customs Territory to cover all imports and intra-EAC traded goods. He said Kenya wants the implementation of the common market and enhanced efficiency in utilisation of natural resources. “We want improvement of agricultural productivity, value addition and facilitation of movement of agricultural goods to enhance food security in the region. This fear that Kenya stands to benefit more if the region is opened up should be cast away completely,” Mbugua said. “Once the House resumes next week, we will check if there are pending Bills from the Third Parliament and ensure there is smooth continuity.” During...

The construction sector’s contribution to GDP hit an all-time high in the third quarter of 2017, buoyed by a raft of mega infrastructure and housing projects and defying a slump in the performance of the overall economy. Output from the sector in the July-September window was Sh99 billion — the highest ever, data by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) shows. This was despite the fact that the country’s economy grew by 4.4 per cent in the third quarter of 2017, the slowest quarterly growth in five years, as prolonged electoral politics and drought took its toll on key segments of the economy. The July-September performance fell far below the impressive 5.6 per cent growth recorded in a similar period in 2016, data released by the KNBS shows. Most sectors including agriculture, manufacturing, health, accommodation, mining and education posted slower growth for the third quarter of 2017 compared to the same quarter last year. The financial and insurance sector, for instance, recorded the biggest drop from 7.1 per cent in third quarter of 2016 to 2.4 per cent this year; while accommodation and food service slowed considerably from 13.5 per cent to 7.3 per cent over the period. Agriculture, which accounts for a quarter of the national GDP, also recorded slower July-September growth of 3.1 per cent compared to 3.8 per cent in the same period last year while manufacturing slowed over the period from 4.4 per cent to 2.1 per cent. The construction sector, however, recorded good performance...

Kenya’s mobile money transactions rose 6.5 percent in the first 11 months of 2017 as compared to a similar period last year, Central Bank of Kenya said in a report released on Thursday. The East African nation’s citizens made transactions valued at 33 billion U.S. dollars between January and November 2017, up from 31 billion dollars in a similar period in 2016. The surge showed that the country would surpass 2016 figures in use of the service, which stood at the 33 billion dollars mark. During the 11 months, according to the apex bank, the largest transactions were done in March, where they stood at 3.2 billion dollars, while the least was recorded in February at 2.7 billion dollars. The number of people employed as agents in the sector also surged significantly in 2017, peaking at 176,986 in November, having started at about 150,000 in January. Source: Coast Week

Reluctance by individual East African Community (EAC) countries to fully open their borders is hurting trade and growth of local manufacturing firms, a regional business lobby group has said. East African Business Council acting chairman Jim Kabeho said partial harmonisation of trade rules by the six EAC states has hurt expansion in regional trade. Some EAC countries, he said, are still erecting non-tariff trade barriers at official borders such as refusal to recognise certificate of origin for some goods, more than seven years after the Common Market Protocol was enforced on July 1, 2010. The pact allows for free movement of goods, people, labour, services and capital among the six partner states — South Sudan being the latest member. “There are many positions we (EAC) have agreed upon which are not being implemented. Individual countries do not want to give away their authority to the common market,” Mr Kabeho told the Business Daily in Nairobi. “We do not have a common market per se as far as I am seeing in trade. We still have official borders being non-tariff barriers.” Kenya and Tanzania, for instance, continue to disagree partly over certificates of origin at the Namanga border. The Kenya Association of Manufacturers has blamed the Tanzania Food and Drugs Authority’s for demanding that some of the products from Kenya be registered, re-labelled and retested. The suspicion among EAC states, Mr Kabeho said, has provided room for an influx of cheaper goods available in the region into the bloc, largely from China and...

The Jomo Kenyatta International Airport will, over the next 100 days, undergo major changes as Kenya gears up for the roll-out of direct flights to the United States. Cabinet secretaries James Macharia (Transport and Infrastructure), Fred Matiang’i (Interior) and Najib Balala (Tourism) last week announced a raft of changes that seek to transform the country’s premier airport into a global aviation hub. Create harmony Mr Macharia said the changes were meant to create harmony among workers at the airport so that they can deliver services at international standards, after the airport’s status was upgraded to Category 1 to pave the way for direct flights to America starting October. “We want to ensure all agencies at the airport work together. JKIA is a key hub in the region and we should therefore meet the expectations of the international community,” he said. Dr Matiang’i said the changes will improve efficiency in handling travellers and creating order at the airport. To begin with, there will be new regulations to control taxis and tour vans. Customer care Public servants at the airport including the police, Kenya Revenue Authority and Immigration officials will be trained on customer care, he added. And there will be more service desks to handle the anticipated increase in the number of travellers. “We must make tough decisions to ensure that there is maximum order at the airport,” said Dr Matiang’i. “But we need to improve efficiency at Immigration. This is the front desk for the country. We received many complaints...

Kenya has opted out of the East African capital markets integration (CMI) project that is to be effected later this year in a bid to make trading in shares quicker and cheaper. In a letter written to the EAC Secretariat in mid-November, Kenya said it would not join Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda to launch the platform in September, suggesting it had concerns on the infrastructure. It said it would monitor the performance of the regional platform vis-à-vis its ongoing modernisation of trading interfaces. Kenya pulled out of the CMI project in 2015, citing irregularities in the $3.3 million tendering process of the software and requested for more time to consult on the matter. Quality of the software Among the concerns Kenya had was on the quality of the software being purchased and whether it will be compatible with the Nairobi Securities Exchange’s clearing and settlement system as well as the capacity of the vendor to deliver on the project. Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda are working on a schedule to have the project up and running by its September 2018 completion target. The project involves acquisition and installation of an information technology platform, the Smart Order Routing System, linking the clearing and settlements systems of securities trade among the EAC member states. It is part of a wider World Bank-funded EAC Financial Sector Development and Regionalisation Project 1, which seeks to support the establishment of a single financial market among the EAC member states. To ensure that the project...

Six years ago, African leaders decided to establish the Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA), a flagship project of the African Union’s Agenda 2063 aiming to fast-track the continent’s economic growth and development by creating one gigantic market of more than 1.2 billion people with a combined GDP of US$2.19 trillion. Prudence Sebahizi, the Chief Technical Advisor and Head of the CFTA Unit at the AU Commission’s Department of Trade and Industry, talked to The New Times’ James Karuhanga about the project’s progress ahead of the upcoming 30th AU Summit, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia later this month. Excerpts: You say the CFTA is a game changer for Africa and its people. For readers who might not have followed developments, what is this CFTA and how is it a game changer for people on the continent? The Continental Free Trade Area is a continental geographic zone where goods and services are supposed to move with no restrictions among member states. Once established, there shall be no administrative barriers at any country’s borders in regards to movement of goods and services. The CFTA will be established by a comprehensive agreement to be concluded by African Union Member States within the broader framework of continental integration agenda and the Abuja Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community. The CFTA aims to achieve a comprehensive and mutually beneficial trade agreement among member states covering trade in goods, trade in services, investment, intellectual property rights and competition policy. It is a game changer in the sense that it will be...