Kenya will today take its case to the European Union in Brussels in a last-ditch effort to garner support for the Economic Partnership Agreement deal. Trade Cabinet Secretary Adan Mohamed is leading a Kenyan delegation to the Belgian capital, where he hopes to bring Tanzania on board to take a united stand with its East African Community (EAC) neighbours on the elusive trade pact The delegation will take part in a session of EAC trade ministers with the EU presidency.Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who is the current chairman of the EAC Summit, is leading the regional delegation. “Kenya and Rwanda signed the EPA in August 2015, with Kenya ratifying the same in September last year. The move by Kenya was aimed at securing Kenya’s duty-free, quota-free market access in the EU as Kenya along with other EAC partner states seek a solution for all to sign the EPA,” said the CS yesterday in a statement. The EAC Summit held on May 20 this year mandated the chairman to engage with the EU to address concerns that some partner states have on signing the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) as a bloc. Main opposer Kenya has put up a spirited fight to have all EAC countries support the EPA as a way of safeguarding unlimited duty-free access of its exports to Europe. The agreement would guarantee EAC traders duty and quota-free access to the EU market in exchange for the gradual opening up of up to 80 per cent of the region’s market...

Mombasa Port received two "ultra-modern" diesel electric cranes last month as part of the "comprehensive program in supporting the Port of Mombasa's resilient port infrastructure initiatives," according to a statement from the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA). The cranes, aimed at mitigating the negative effects on the environment, were funded by the Trade Mark East Africa (TMA) and the U.K. government’s International Climate Fund for $8.7 million, the KPA said. Additionally, multiple media outlets have reported that the KPA has received a 35 billion Kenya shilling (U.S. $338 million) loan from the Japanese government. According to the reports, KPA Managing Director Catherine Mturi-Wairi has said the authority will use the funds to begin second-phase construction on the second container terminal at the Mombasa Port. The second terminal was added to the port in early 2016, which boosted its container handling capacity by 50 percent. Slated for January 2018, the expansion of the second terminal will add 450,000 TEUs of handling capacity, reports state. The first phase, completed in September 2016, enabled the terminal to handle a total of 550,000 TEUs. Source: American Shipper

Northern Tanzania-bound cargo through Mombasa port accounted for 281 Twenty-foot Equivalent Units (TEUs) or 5.4 per cent to emerge the second transit destination in the week ended September 20. As usual Uganda retained its leading position, accounting for 4,228 TEUs or 81.2 per cent of the total transit bound traffic which stood at 5,208 TEUs. Other transit destinations included South Sudan which accounted for 279 TEUs, followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo with 205 TEUs and Rwanda with 167 TEUs. Somalia and Burundi registered 29 TEUs and 11 TEUs respectively. During the week under review, the container terminals received nine vessels that recorded a ship average working time of 1.67 days. Container dwell time registered 4.25 days down from 5.55 days in the previous week. The container carriers discharged 10,193 TEUs and loaded another 11,356 TEUs. Containers delivered out of the port by road transport were 11,479 TEUs while the rail lifted 321 TEUs. The total yard population declined by 7,013 TEUs to 12,158 TEUs. The new population comprised 2,253 TEUS awaiting pickup order, 3,704 TEUs ready for collection and 1,659 TEUs full exports. Others included 967 TEUs for transhipment, 2,749 TEUs empties and 826 TEUs at the Customs Warehouse. Local bound imports also declined by 1,962 TEUs to settle at 2,423 TEUs. Container freight stations (CFSs) received 821,090 TEUs and delivered 817,645 TEUs leaving a balance of 3,445 TEUs. The Conventional Cargo Terminal received 25 general cargo vessels and handled 262,885 metric tonnes at an average of 37,555...

Tanzania has retained business permit fees for Kenyan firms after nearly one year of gruelling negotiations. The move is seen to symbolise the country’s lack of enthusiasm for the 18- year-old trade pact among East African Community member states. Kenyan firms expanding or setting up subsidiaries in Tanzania have, however, won some relief after Tanzania cut the permit fee by half from Sh50,000 to Sh25,000. Tanzania upset its integration partners with the November 2015 introduction of permit charges with the enactment of the non-citizen employment regulation Act. The treaty, which took effect in 2010 demands the scrapping of visas and work permit fees charged on firms from neighbouring countries. Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda have waived the work permit fees since 2013, leaving only Tanzania, Burundi and new entrant South Sudan with such restrictions. Efforts to scrap work permit have since taken several rounds of negotiations including the July direct communication between President Uhuru Kenyatta and President John Magufuli and the September 8 meeting between Trade principal secretary Chris Kiptoo and his Tanzanian counterpart, Adolf Mkenda. “Tanzania has revised business permit fees for EAC partner states to $250. The chiefs of immigration and labour commissioners will meet on October 31 to deliberate further on this matter,” Dr Kiptoo and Prof Mkenda said in a joint statement after their Dar meeting. During the meeting, Tanzania also agreed to cut by three quarters the expatriate work permit fees charged on EAC firms that send non-Tanzanian staff to work in the country. “Expatriate permit...

Tanzania has blocked preferential access for Kenyan textile goods manufactured outside the Export Processing Zone (EPZ), citing unfair competition for its own manufacturers. "This is informed by the fact that Kenya has allowed textile and apparel manufactures operating in the EPZ to off load their final textile products in the Kenyan market duty free," Tanzania stated in a communiqué from a joint meeting on September 2 in Dar-es-Salaam to iron out trade wrangles between the two countries. "This in effect may hinder similar products from Tanzania from being competitive when sold in the Kenyan market." Kenya in May cleared firms operating in its EPZs to sell up to an expanded 40 per cent of their products in the local market as part of strategy to boost sales and help prop the struggling industry. The EPZ firms were initially only allowed to sell 20 per cent of their products in the Kenyan market with the rest sold under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) -- a trade pact that allows US buyers to import goods from a number of sub-Saharan African countries without paying taxes. Dumping products The gesture has, however, sparked a trade spat between the two countries amid concern that the Kenya's expanded domestic market sales quota for EPZ firms could lead to dumping of products in the Tanzanian market. "Tanzania is not according preferential treatment to Kenya because it is now enjoying a stay of application for textiles and footwear. Moreover, 96 per cent of textile produced...

September 25, 2017: Kenya has recently approved freight charges for the standard gauge railway. Kenya Railways Corporatoion (KRC) will start freight operations on the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) from December 2017. And the government is aiming to transport 40 percent of cargo from Mombasa port by rail. According to news paper reports, the corporation has received approval of the tariffs from the Ministry of Transport. The approived tariff is of half the road haulage rates. KRC will charge $500 to transport a 20ft container between Mombasa and Nairobi, half of the $1,000 that truck owners charge. As of now the SGR is carrying an average of 88 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) and taking around 8 hours between Mombasa and Nairobi which is predominatly government supplies. The Corporation has received 18 more freight locomotives and 60 wagons designed for double-stacking on the SGR freight operations. This will go further in decongesting the Port of Mombasa as well as Mombasa Road. The SGR cargo line will run freight trains with 54 double-stack flat wagons, carrying 216 TEU per trip, with a load of 4,000 tonnes on each train. KRC is looking at scaling up the trial runs on the said route. Construction of the Inland Container Depot (ICD) at Embakasi is in final stages.  Currently, testing of ICD operations is ongoing via the food relief freight transportation and handling. The facility will soon be handed over by the China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) to Kenya Railways for official commencement of cargo operations later...

ISLAMABAD: The Ministry of Commerce has approved ‘Look Africa Plan’ with stringent measures to boost bilateral trade between Pakistan and Africa in the upcoming years. The plan was approved by the ministry on Aug 17, as per project details available with Dawn. Pakistan’s total trade with Africa is $3 billion as against the total trade volume of $3 trillion. Pakistan’s share in total trade of African countries is 0.3 per cent. Under the policy, top 10 countries out of the 54 African nations selected trade promotion include Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Sudan, Tanzania, and Ethiopia. All these countries constitute 78pc of the total African gross domestic product (GDP). According to the policy, Pakistan will offer to negotiate a preferential trade agreement with three African trading blocs – Southern African Customs Union (SACU), East African Community (EAC), and Economic Community of West African States that constitute (ECOWAS). SACU members are Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland while EAC comprises of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. A similar PTA with ECOWAS, which includes Benin; Burkina Faso; Cabo Verde; Côte d’Ivoire; Gambia; Ghana; Guinea; Guinea Bissau; Liberia; Mali; Niger; Nigeria; Senegal; Sierra Leone; and Togolese, is also envisioned. The value of bilateral trade between the countries is less than $100 million. As per policy, joint working groups (JWGs) on trade will be established by the commerce ministry to engage major African countries to have regular interaction. Currently, Pakistan has only 13 joint ministerial commissions with African...

There is an electoral squabble in Kenya following an annulled presidential poll, and a constitutional dispute in Uganda over attempts to remove an age-limit clause on the presidency; these two cases will hike the region’s risk profile if not amicably resolved. A risk profile is an evaluation of threats to which a country or region is exposed and is an important aspect when international developers are determining investment destinations. Following his unprecedented court victory that overturned President Uhuru Kenyatta’s earlier triumph in the August 8 polls, Raila Odinga is expected by some, to win (assuming the things he claims to have blocked his earlier win, are stopped in the fresh run). But in spite of the poll irregularities that informed Kenya Supreme Court’s decision to nullify the election results, there is no doubt in my mind that Uhuru Kenyatta is still more popular among Kenyan voters than his rival; I also strongly believe that Mr. Odinga is well aware of this fact. And knowing that victory is beyond him, albeit the public’s high expectation in him to win the next election, Raila Odinga appears to have decided to be an ‘itching opponent’ to either delay his own defeat and Kenyatta’s victory or create believable excuse for his impending 2nd loss. It is in this context that I view the decision, last week, to postpone to October 26, the fresh election which had earlier been scheduled for a week earlier, in order to ‘address electoral process anomalies’ that Mr. Odinga cited...

Kenya’s status as East Africa’s economic powerhouse is at stake as Tanzania races closely behind, with a higher growth rate that is increasingly narrowing the gap between the two economies. Tanzania has added impetus to its economic firepower, growing by an impressive seven per cent over the past five years compared to Kenya’s growth of just above five per cent. The latest International Monetary Fund (IMF) data shows that Tanzania’s economy expanded seven times in the past 20 years while Kenya’s output grew five times since 1997 with the trend expected in coming years, weakening Nairobi’s future dominance. The same data shows that there were times in the past when Kenya’s economy would be as many as four times as large as that of Uganda. However, such a big gap has not been reached in many years and is has remained mostly below three times. Rapid growth In Tanzania, it is sustained rapid growth that has helped the country reduce the gap in the size of its economy compared to her neighbour. It’s such growth that saw neighbouring Ethiopia overtake Kenya’s economy for the first time in 2015, a situation that experts say might happen again with Tanzania if nothing changes. Kenya’s economy size was more than double that of Tanzania 20 years ago but the gap has now narrowed to less than half. The IMF data shows that Kenya’s annual economic output, also known as gross domestic product (GDP), stood at $13.7 billion (Sh1.4 trillion) in 1997 while that...

This of course bears out the inflexible maxim: ‘out of sight, out of mind’ – a characteristic of a large number of African institutions which continue to toil away in the shadows. With media space limited and so many organisations, public and private, fighting to be seen and heard, anything less than a robust proactive approach to securing stage presence will not do. Fortunately, over the past few years, first under the presidency of Jean-Louis Ekra and now under his successor, Dr Benedict Oramah, who both understand the importance of a strong public presence, Afreximbank is rightly taking its place among the continent’s institutional pantheon. It is important that it should. After the rollercoaster ride over the past 15 years, the continent, despite the current slowdown, is well positioned to take the next painful but essential step in moving up the development ladder to middle-income status. Given the fickle ‘boom and bust’ commodities cycle, most parties are agreed that the most sustainable route towards this end is through a rapid increase in trade – particularly intra-African trade. And this is where Afreximbank has a critical role to play. The lifeblood of trade is affordable finance but the muscle is an expansion of markets. Since 1994, Afreximbank has approved more than $51bn in credit facilities for African businesses, including about $10.3bn in 2016 alone. This is a clear indication of the increasing importance of the bank in facilitating the rising volume of African trade. Nevertheless, this is not enough. The bank,...