Customs valuation is the process of determining the value of goods for the purpose of assessing the amount of taxes and duties they should be charged Nairobi, 03 May 2024: The Kenya Revenue Authority and the United Kingdom (UK) have partnered to streamline the Customs valuation process to make it more efficient, transparent, consistent, and predictable. This will reduce disputes, ensure faster clearance of goods for businesses, and create a level playing field. This process is also expected to boost Government revenues, resolve issues of trade based money laundering, and contribute to safeguarding consumers from unsafe and counterfeit products. As part of this enhancement, KRA with funding channelled through TradeMark Africa, by the UK trained over 2200 people involved in import of goods. The two month-long activity convened customs staff, clearing agents, and traders from Nairobi, Mombasa, Eldoret, Busia, Malaba, Namanga, and Moyale to improve their understanding of valuation rules and enhance their awareness on recent updates to the system. Commenting on the continued partnership between KRA and the UK, the British High Commissioner to Kenya Neil Wigan said “Kenya is at the heart of East African trade.  We want that trade to operate at maximum efficiency, to benefit businesses and consumers across Kenya and East Africa. The UK and Kenya are working together in partnership to provide high quality infrastructure, which will deliver growth for Kenya and the region. We go far when we go together.” The funding for the project is part of the UK Government’s work to...

“Armed men broke his windscreen and started hitting him with an iron bar. They stole the goods he was carrying and left him for dead. By the time help came, it was too late. He had died from excessive bleeding,”-Patrick Mutinda, former Truck driver. East Africa’s Regional Electronic Cargo Tracking system (RECTS) has many benefits some of which include safety of cargo, expedited clearance at borders and reduced dumping. To many long-distance truck drivers, it has assured them of safety on the sometimes-treacherous transport corridors. RECTs is a webbased system that provides a harmonised platform for revenue authorities in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda to monitor transit cargo from loading to offloading thus curbing cargo dumping, diversion among other risks. Over the years, cargo volume along transport corridor has increased and this raised the need to facilitate quick movement of cargo without compromising customs security controls. That is the well-known story. The untold story is that of long-distance truck drivers ferrying high risk and often in demand goods, whose lives have been saved from armed robbers by the rapid response unit attached to RECTs. Drivers like Mutinda. Mutinda is a former long-distance truck driver. He recalls his perpetual discomfort driving along Kiu, a lonely hilly section of the Mombasa-Nairobi highway near Salama, as the area was known for armed gangsters who attacked cargo trucks. His friend lost his life in one such incidence. “My friend… as his truck slowed down, armed men attacked him, injuring him, and taking off with the goods...

Bureaucratic delays related to standards certification almost led Michael Kimeu* to give up on his ambitions to set up a bottled water business in early 2010’s. Kimeu set up a water distillation and bottling plant on the outskirts of Kajiado, a county to the south west of Kenya’s capital Nairobi. However, he knew that he could not embark on his new venture without his product acquiring certification from the Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS). The certification is a mandatory requirement for all locally manufactured products before they are shipped to markets locally or even regionally. It is issued to a firm as confirmation that a product conforms to requirements set by the Bureau. As soon as his equipment was installed and first product samples generated, Kimeu lodged his application for a permit. Almost half a year later, he was yet to receive the permit and attempts to follow up led to frustration. The delay had a negative impact on his business as supermarkets and other retailers could not stock his product without the KEBS mark of quality. It is an offence under the Standards Act Cap 496 of the laws of Kenya to offer a product for sale without a valid standard mark of quality. To keep his business active, Kimeu altered his initial plans and set up a small-scale water-refilling business, awaiting the KEBS license. "The kin d of investment I had made could not be recouped by the new strategy and I found that I was running into...

Mariam Babu, 43, a mother of five and grandmother to two who sells eggs in Kenya and salt in Uganda via the Busia border town, is not the image that springs to mind when you think of a smuggler. Yet when she recalls her time bringing in products from Kenya into Uganda through abandoned bush routes in the dead of the night, around 10 years ago, that is the word she chooses to describe herself. [caption id="attachment_55075" align="alignnone" width="640"] “Don’t get me wrong. We were not bringing in dangerous contraband,” she notes, “it was things like rice, wheat flour, and household goods. Yet the process of going through the proper routes at the Busia border, before the One-Stop Border Post was built was too complicated and too difficult for us small traders. The offices we have today didn’t exist. None of us knew where to go to clear our goods, the officers were rude and corrupt, and there was much paperwork to do - it was all so expensive. We never felt welcome at the border!”[/caption] Today, Mariam is the chairwoman of the Women’s Cross Border Traders Cooperative Society. From her office at the Women’s Trade Desk at the Busia One-Stop Border Post (OSBP), she reflects on her decade-long transformation. The changes at the border over the past several years, she says, have not only changed the border but also changed her life. She notes the establishment of the East African Community (EAC) Common Market, the construction of the OSBP...

At the launch of the Kenyan Electronic Single Window in May 2014, President Uhuru called for the establishment of an EAC regional single window platform to integrate the national single window systems in partner states. Discussions on this initiative are ongoing as part of the EAC SCT operationalization, but currently only Kenya and Rwanda have functioning national level eSWs, though progress is made in establishing eSW in the other EAC member states. In late 2014, Tanzania contracted the delivery of the eSW to a private contractor, with initial roll-out for the Port of Mombasa with other border crossing and airports to be connected in the second phase. TMA is supporting the development of the eSW in Uganda, with an agreement signed for support from the Government of Denmark in September 2014. In March 2015, Burundi launched its own eSW with a number of key agencies already connected. The regional approach to eSW has been pioneered by the launch of the ASEAN Single Window Project (ASW) in 2013. The ASW is a regional initiative that connects and integrates national level eSWs of Member States. ASW implementation is expected to ensure compatibility of Member States eSWs with international open communication standards while also ensuring that each of those Member States can then exchange data securely and reliably with any trading partners that use international open standards. The ASW at present is rather limited in scope and connects only the Customs agencies of some ASEAN member countries. It currently supports the exchange of...

Section 5.2 of the report provided a detailed analysis of the average release times of imports and exports for the 2010-2014 period. In addition, it identified the release times for the various stages; some of these changes can be attributed to the ReSW, others are the result of other reform measures identified in the report. These data highlight progress as well as outstanding issues that can guide RRA in further streamlining its operations and extracting more benefits from the ReSW platforms o as to further better serve the trading community by reducing these times. These finding provide more information that has so far been used to monitor the progress of the ReSW and can be updated regularly with minor effort. In addition, the table below provides information on standard deviations for the overall time release estimate and for the different stage for the period 2010-2014. This is the first time that this statistic has been calculated for Rwanda release time and is rarely computed in time release studies. It contains valuable information and can assist in focusing on problem areas in the release process. The standard deviation statistics reflect how representative the calculated averages are for the population of release times of the data set. It informs us that 78.2 per cent of all observations fall within one standard deviation. For instance if the average time it takes between acceptance and release is 483 minutes and the standard deviation is 1118 minutes (Q4, 2014) it means that in the frequency...

1. BACKGROUND This case study highlights how Kenya National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KNCCI) a membership based trade support institution has benefited from the TMA SWIFT projects initiatives. The Kenya National Chamber of Commerce and Industry is registered as a not-for-profit private company limited by guarantee under the Companies Act Chapter 486 of the laws of Kenya with a National Office and County Chamber’s offices in all the 47 counties in Kenya. The core purpose of KNCCI is to promote, protect and develop commercial, industrial and investments interests of its members and the entire business community both locally and internationally. The KNCCI SWIFT project was implemented at an average budget of US$ 120,000 and the project started in 2014 and is expected to be ending in 2017 with the main implementing partner being TMA. The project targeted beneficiary members of KNCCI who constitute of the small, micro enterprises (MSEs), medium and large enterprises and the expected outcomes of this initiative were to provide support in implementation of an automated system focusing on Trade Facilitation Process and Business Development Process. Molo Greens Limited located in Molo town in Kenya is one of the companies that was identified in this case study using the KNCCI automated system. 2. THE ISSUE The KNCCI stakeholders highlighted that they were facing challenges in accessing manual certificate of origin which was also causing unnecessary delays and also increasing the cost of doing business. The companies that were involved in exporting had to regularly prepare and...

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Context: Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS) is a statutory body established under the Standards Act (CAP 496) of the laws of Kenya to ensure that quality products and services are accessible in the market. Under the Kenyan government, all people in Kenya have a right to access quality products and services in the market. This is done through product certification and system certification schemes that are managed by the KEBS. In order to produce certified products, a culture of quality needs to be entrenched among the stakeholders especially the consumers and the manufacturers. The World Bank report on the state of Kenya’s economy (8th edition, June 2013) highlighted the need to address the bottlenecks that affected the cost of doing business in Kenya. In order to promote the competitiveness of the Kenyan locally manufactured products, certificates and other types of conformity assessments documents have to be issued by a recognized institution such as accredited laboratories and certification bodies.   Issue: In the EAC domestic trading system, the major non-tariff barriers (NTB) is the variation in certification, testing and inspection practices, and standards used. Unless trade partners use similar or harmonized standards and conformity assessment procedures and recognize each other's certification results, the costly problem of discriminatory, non-transparent, and unnecessary obstacles to trade will persist. Quality products are a pre-requisite for market entry in the EAC and beyond. However, NTBs such as standards, technical regulations and poor quality infrastructure are major impediments to trade in the region. Kenya needs to demonstrate...