Press Center | Freight Shipping Logistics News
The clearing of goods, bound for Uganda at the Mombasa port, has resumed after a two-week boycott, which had threatened to strain business relations between the country and Kenya.
Customs officials from Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi met earlier last week, and according to Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), the two countries resolved the issues.
The clearing of goods, bound for Uganda at the Mombasa port, has resumed after a two-week boycott, which had threatened to strain business relations between the country and Kenya.
Customs officials from Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi met earlier last week, and according to Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), the two countries resolved the issues.
Traders from Uganda had boycotted clearing their cargo from November 14, opting to use the port of Dar es Salaam to protest the introduction of prepay taxes by KRA.
READ: Ugandan traders threaten to boycott Mombasa port
This prompted Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni to issue a statement saying that Kenyan officials’ refusal to allow Uganda-bound goods into the country was in contravention of the EAC Treaty and that he would petition President Uhuru Kenyatta on the issue.
“Some of those Kenyan officials are narrow-minded. They wanted to block our sugar. Now they have gone for our chicken,” President Museveni was quoted saying by Uganda’s media.
READ: Museveni tells Kenya not to block Uganda's sugar
Uganda-bound cargo accounts for over 70 per cent of total transit goods through the port of Mombasa.
Although Ugandan traders were opting for the Dar es Salaam port, it is costly to transport cargo from the Dar port as opposed to Mombasa.
It is estimated that it will cost importers approximately $1,000 more to transport a 40-feet container from Dar to Kampala, than the $3,800 they are paying from Mombasa to Kampala by road.
This is not the first time Uganda is threatening to boycott the Mombasa port due to non-tariff barriers imposed on them by KRA.
The latest trade dispute is just among the dozens involving companies in the two East African Partner States and they are not unprecedented.
Earlier in 2008, Kenya blocked imports of day-old chicks and chicken products from Uganda into the country claiming they were not up to standard.
Uganda responded by refusing to lift the ban on the importation of beef, bull semen and other associated products from Kenya.