Kenya is expected to initiate its automobile export to the remaining parts of East Africa shortly. This would be under the execution of the AfCTA (the African Continental Free Trade ) act. Kenya was provided this permission after EAC (Eastern African Countries) met the minimum conditions/standards applied. However, EAC was given a very steep target by AFCTA, which made it fall in category A. In other words, 90.2 percent of the total tariff lines had to be achieved. This simply meant attaining 5129 tariff lines of the total 5688.
Category A includes several classifications: agro-processing, motor vehicle assembly, value addition, pharmaceuticals, mineral processing, and auto spare industries. These details were elaborated by EAC Principal Secretary Kevit Desai. The announcement was made on the weekend during a meeting at the (SCTIFI) on Trade, Finance, Industry, and Investment. It was an EAC Extra-Ordinary Meeting during which these details were revealed.
According to the initial details mentioned, the count of tariff officers is 29, as declared by African Continental Free Trade (AfCTA). However, it is projected that this number will progressively rise to 34. The tariff officer verification process has a specific purpose behind it. Its goal is to get evidence that AfCTA members comply with the Corporate Trade Free Agreement's basic standards.
For quite some time, there has been communication on free trade, emphasizing tariff reductions within continental locales. A week before AfCFTA, has been involved in communication-related to cutting down tariffs. Earlier, AfCFTA, which holds the position of secretary-general, announced that reducing tariffs was mandatory for continent-wide implementation of free trade.
The agreement's implementation under AfCTA was expected to go underway from 1st Jan 2021. However, due to ambiguities related to product categorization, the execution was delayed. As a result, there are different trading blocks, and tariffs are applied to the product once it comes out of the block. For example, consider the shipment of goods from the Economic Community of West Africa (Ecowas) to the East African Community (EAC).In that case, 50 percent duty would be applied.
Once the National Assembly did the adoption of free trade, Kenya was the first country that properly adopted it. It set a benchmark that other countries would follow to implement.
