Trade Cabinet Secretary Moses Kuria arrived in Zambia on Thursday for the COMESA council of ministers meeting.
“I have this morning landed in Lusaka, Zambia for the 43rd COMESA council of ministers meeting taking place. TFTA will unlock the potential of our economies through increased market access for goods and services, infrastructure and development funding by development partners,” Kuria said via his Twitter account.
Ambassador Flora Karugu, Kenya’s ambassador to Zambia, Trade Secretary Bruno Linyuri, and Advisor Joseph Ndirangu welcomed him.
The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) is an African regional economic community made up of twenty-one member countries ranging from Tunisia to Eswatini.
It was founded in December 1994 to replace a Preferential Trade Area that had been in place since 1981.
Kuria’s attendance at the high-level session will be his first since taking over the trade docket.
Kenya is currently on track to fall short of meeting its Comesa sugar import quota due to a global shortage of the commodity, subjecting local consumers to even higher prices.
The Comesa secretariat assigned Kenya a quota of 180,000 tonnes of sugar, which it must import from member countries this year.
Kenya, however, has imported 48 percent of the total allocation with only two months left in the year.
