Tanzania has increased the cost of export permits by 93 percent, which is likely to spark another round of trade disputes between Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.
According to border officials, the cost of obtaining export permits in Tanzania has risen from Sh27, 000 to Sh52, 000 per truck.
As traders and truckers were caught off guard by the new requirement, the move caused a massive snarl-up of trucks moving to Kenya in the last week.
“Tanzania has increased the charges that it levies on export permit to Sh52, 000 per truck creating confusion at the border but activities are slowly coming back to normal,” said an officer of the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) who will not be named as he is not authorised to talk to the media.
Hundreds of trucks were left stranded at the border the whole of last week as truck owners updated their export permits to meet the new requirements. However, officials from the Kenya Bureau of Standards (Kebs) told the Business Daily that they resumed the clearing of trucks last week.
“We have now seen some movement of trucks from Tanzania to Kenya. We have carried out some samples of the goods getting into Kenya, meaning that the normal flow of trucks is slowly gaining momentum,” said a Kebs official.
The new directive is expected to hit millers who rely on maize imports from Tanzania to meet the country’s current shortage. It is also likely to spark a new round of trade war between Kenya and Tanzania, less than a year after the two countries resolved their differences, which had hampered cross-border trade.
Since 2019, long-standing trade disputes have slowed the flow of goods across common borders.
Tanzania imposed a 25% import duty on Kenyan confectionery in 2020, including juice, ice cream, chocolate, sweets, and chewing gums, claiming Kenya produced them using zero-rated industrial sugar imports.
Kenya barred Tanzanian tour vans from entering the Maasai Mara National Reserve, citing Tanzania’s prohibition on Kenyan operators entering the Serengeti National Park.
Tanzania heightened the trade dispute in February of last year by imposing new quality verification standards for Kenyan products.
These differences were, however, resolved when Tanzania’s new President Samia Suluhu visited Nairobi last year for a bilateral meeting with Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta.
