The value of goods ordered from China into Kenya rebounded in the six months that ended June 2024 to grow at the fastest pace in three years, official data shows, partly reflecting higher orders of machinery and transportation equipment, including railway locomotives.
Spending on imports from China jumped 25.56 percent in the review period to Sh257.70 billion, according to provisional imports data from Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), marking a turnaround from a 9.96 percent fall to Sh205.24 billion a year earlier.
The growth was the quickest since the first half of 2021 when the value of orders climbed 32.33 percent to Sh208.90 billion, benefiting from low-base effects after Covid-induced shutdowns hit shipments.
The bump in orders from the country’s largest source market by value coincided with a period where expenditure on machinery and related equipment imports grew 28.93 percent year-on-year to Sh167.22 billion, while transportation equipment climbed 63.45 percent to Sh110.50 billion.
Kenya largely relies on China for machinery as well as electrical and electronic equipment supply, making it the single-largest source market.
China, for instance, accounted for about a fifth (19.23 percent) of Kenya’s annual total imports in the six-month period which amounted to Sh1.34 trillion, according to the KNBS provisional numbers.
The share of China’s imports has increased from 16.55 percent in the same period in 2023, partly boosted by orders for locomotives and wagons for standard gauge railway earlier in the year.
Kenya Railways Corporation acquired 300 extra train wagons for SGR freight service in the first half of the year on the back of complaints from importers over reportedly frequent delays of cargo at the Port of Mombasa because of the occasional lack of wagons. “We have increased the number of wagons.
The challenge of reliability and availability of wagons has been sorted. We have also grown our train numbers to about 10 trains from eight,” KRC managing director Philip Mainga told the Business Daily on August 26.
Beijing has over the years come under scrutiny for creating a market for its goods when inking funding deals for mega projects such as SGR, while the bulk of containers goes back “empty”.
This has resulted in a gaping trade deficit between the two countries. For example, China shipped goods worth Sh494.25 billion to Kenya in 12 months ended March 2024, while importing goods valued at Sh27.13 billion— a gap of Sh467.12 billion.
The widening trade deficit between China and Africa was a concern for some analysts during last week’s Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (Focac).
“There appear to be two key elements to this. The first is to push for help to move Africa up the export value chain. The second is to try to reduce imports from China,” Jason Tuvey, deputy chief emerging markets economist at UK-based Capital Economics, said in a recent note on Focac.
“African governments are likely to fear that China’s growing global market share of a range of manufactured goods both up and down the value chain will make development across the continent more challenging.”
