Uhuru drops storage costs for traders with goods held at port

Business Reporter

Nation Media Group

Small traders, whose imports have been lying at the Port of Mombasa in the wake of a recent crackdown on illicit goods, will enjoy storage cost waiver after State House offered them a clearance amnesty.

Details of the amnesty emerged Thursday during a five-hour consultative meeting of small traders with President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Chief of Staff and Head of Presidential Delivery Unit Nzioka Waita in downtown Nairobi.

Mr Waita said that the government had decided to waive storage costs on the 217 containers that had been identified for the amnesty, adding that State House had “chosen to offer targeted support.”

“We have gone through all the containers that were detained from last year, verified the contents and removed illegal and substandard goods before removing all the charges levied by the government,” he said.

KRA commissioner for Customs and Border Control Julius Musyoki told the traders that the Treasury had on Thursday dispatched a letter to the shipping lines confirming the government’s commitment to take care of the costs arising from the delay.

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Weed out consolidators

Mr Musyoki said the government wanted to weed out consolidators and clearing agents that have been avoiding duties by mis-declaring goods and inconveniencing small traders.

Nairobi Importers and Traders Association, a lobby for small traders, had staged a demonstration to the President’s Harambee House office complaining that goods in excess of Sh10 billion had been held at the port leading to stock-outs and high storage costs.

On Thursday, it emerged that the protest caught the attention of Mr Kenyatta triggering a consultative meeting with KRA, the Anti-Counterfeit Agency and the Kenya Bureau of Standards to offer the amnesty.

“This is a constituent of traders that the President has asked us to handle very carefully and he is expecting an assurance that we have resolved the issue,” Mr Waita said.

KRA announced that it had introduced a regime of pre-shipment verification for consolidated goods that will, for instance, see goods consolidated in Guangzhou deal with quality benchmarks at the source before the cost of shipping is incurred.”

Mr Waita further told traders that government had started a crackdown on foreigners who are posing competition to locals by running small businesses after applying for licences to run big corporations.