Transport

Kenya plans team of negotiators to steer trade talks

kenya-talks

President Uhuru Kenyatta with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Nairobi. FILE PHOTO | NMG

Kenya seeks to set up a permanent team that will negotiate all trade agreements between Nairobi and other countries as it seeks to reap maximum benefits from such pacts.

Kenya  has no permanent national structure charged with negotiating trade deals, with the exception of a team that handles matters relating to World Trade Organisation (WTO).

This means that Kenyans may be getting the shorter end of the stick due to lack of a expertise to discuss trade pacts.

“There also lacks a mechanism of ensuring that experts from line ministries and private sector institutions who are seconded to undertake specific negotiations remain as standing committee members to ensure institutional memory, consistency and retention of capacity for trade negotiations in a core group/committee of negotiators,” reads the national trade policy unveiled last week.

The East African Trade Negotiations Act passed in 2008 by the bloc’s regional legislature demands that each member state sets up a national trade negotiations committee “which shall prepare a national position on each and every issue or item for negotiation at the regional and multilateral level.”

Kenya has already signed the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union but Tanzania, Burundi and South Sudan have rejected the deal, raising queries on Nairobi’s negotiating skills.

The East African Community member countries reckon that the terms of the trade deal — allowing duty-and-quota free access to the European Union market in exchange for a gradual opening of up to 80 per cent of the region’s market to European products — is unfair for their economies.

Nairobi has also been on a charm offensive to sign bilateral trade agreements with countries such as India, Israel, Turkey, South Korea, South Africa, Egypt, Hungary, Slovakia, Somalia and France when their heads of State visited Kenya or during State visits by President Uhuru Kenyatta.

The Ministry of Trade will also train county government officials on trade negotiations given that some of the devolved units have been seeking overseas markets for their produce such as coffee, horticulture and pulses.

Apart from the lack of negotiating skills, the government has also noted that other challenges to international trade include the persistence of non-tariff barriers (NTBs) in East Africa.