This archive report was first published on 21 July 2019.
More than a month after President Uhuru Kenyatta ordered the clearance of stuck containers, several remain at Nairobi's Inland Container Depot. The containers, which were supposed to be cleared by August 2, are now at risk of being auctioned.
Small traders had asked for intervention from the President after they ran into clearance headwinds at the port in May. They claimed to have at least 1,000 containers with consolidated goods.
According to sources within the port, about 99 containers have no owners claiming them, while a few others have pending tax bills. This has complicated the clearance process.
Traders who have held two meetings with the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) were given an ultimatum to clear the containers or face auction. However, some large importers tried to take advantage of the presidential directive, especially in Mombasa, making things more complicated.
Those whose containers remain unattended may lose them through auction as the mystery of who they are and what they had imported lingers on, a source said.
On Friday, KRA indicated that it had agreed with the Kenya Bureau of Standards and the Small Scale Traders to 'sign off the process'. The mystery of who imported the uncleared cargo became even deeper following earlier claims that some traders had declared the cargo as destined for Uganda in a possible tax evasion camouflage under cargo consolidation.
Trade and Industrialisation Cabinet Secretary Peter Munya said last month that about 300 containers had been cleared by the agencies, with some 125 containers still having unknown owners.
The slow progress of the exercise whose three weeks' timeline given by the President expired a month ago is said to have been complicated by the informal nature of the import chain the small traders use.
Some traders go all the way to China to buy goods, using proxies who pose as clearing agents (some fake) who either swindle them or take long before paying the requisite fees to clear cargo.
Others import then look for financing to clear the goods, plans that many times fail and sink them deeper into crisis as demurrage charges pile up while they struggle to clear the cargo from the ports.
Containers carrying an assortment of items also needed approval from the CS since they had not undergone the pre-export verification from their source countries.
CS Munya announced in January that all importers would be required to subject their cargo to an inspection from the country of origin without which they would be required to return them to their ports of origin.
The conformity assessment programme, started in September 2005, applies to products at the respective exporting countries to ensure their compliance with the applicable Kenyan standards.
There has been extra vigilance with consolidated cargo as it presents a massive inspection challenge to port authorities who have blamed them for mis-declaring cargo, tax evasion, and smuggling of counterfeits.
Government introduced strict regulations to guide cargo consolidation in shared containers to curb tax evasion and ease clearance of goods at the ports.
