Homes cut appetite for imported goods

Households cut the value of imports like clothes and furniture in the first two months of the year by the biggest margin after Coronavirus disrupted supply chains.

Data from the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) shows that Kenyans imported ready-made manufactured goods worth Sh44.9 billion in the first two months from Sh50.3 billion in a similar period last year, reflecting an 11 percent drop.

The drop is the largest since the State started making public monthly import data in 2005 and coincided with a period when flow of goods from China had slowed down due to the Coronavirus outbreak that led to a shutdown of factories in the Asian country.

“In February, we recorded a number of ships but most of them recorded blank arrivals meaning they docked with fewer containers than expected. This month we are most hit by the Covid-19, which is now a global pandemic,” said KPA, while blaming the outbreak, which originated in the city of Wuhan, an inland logistics hub in China’s Hubei province.

The household items are captured under manufactured goods by the CBK and include clothes, furniture, medicine, kitchen ware, medicine, paper and rubber related products.

Kenya imports a wide range of goods from China with electronics like mobile phones topping shipment orders that also include clothing, kitchenware, furniture, machinery, optical and medical equipment.

Most Chinese factories were shut in January and February as Beijing scrambled to contain the outbreak, which has disrupted supply chains across the world.

China’s top container ports were also hit by a backlog of cargo on their docks as workers kept off jobs after travel curbs, jamming up global supply chains.

The pandemic iinfected more than 82,000 people and killed 3, 341 in China alone, and caused massive port congestion due to labour shortages caused by city lockdowns across the country.

China is the largest container cargo handler - processing around 30 percent of global traffic or around 715,000 containers a day in 2019. The virus clampdown has impacted supply chains of everything from sneakers, machine parts to technology components and food items.

China says it has brought the virus under control and has ended the lockdowns as the pandemic continues to ravage Europe and the US.

The record fall in manufactured goods imports was the biggest for all categories of items shipped into Kenya.

The CBK data further shows that the value of imported machinery dipped by 10 percent to Sh78.4 billion in the first two months of the year.

The value of imported minerals and jewellery stood at Sh48.3 billion, reflecting a fall of eight percent from 2019.

The data shows that only animal and vegetable oils, crude materials, chemicals and food imports recorded a rise in value in the first two months.

Animal and vegetable oils rose highest by 40 percent to Sh16.1 billion followed by crude materials at Sh7.3 billion or a rise of 29 percent.