Kenya targets real estate in foreign capitals for export warehouses
The Kenyan government wants to set up bonded custom warehouses in the Democratic Republic of Congo and other key markets to hold produce the country expects to collect from county aggregation centers.
Cabinet Secretary for Investments, Trade and Industry Moses Kuria said to promote exports, the government wanted to set up the value chain from counties all the way to the key markets.
The CS asked the National Assembly Trade committee to allocate up to Kes4 billion to the export promotion strategy that seeks to collect produce from the 47 devolved units.
The government has already set aside Kes4.7 billion as conditional grant where each county will get Kes100 million to set up an industrial park. Mr Kuria said county governments have also pledged to match the central government allocation within their budgets.
“If I can get a matching Kes4.7 billion from this committee to get to about Kes10 billion we can have warehouses in key markets like Eastern DRC so that our people can export to Congo without going there,” the CS said.
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The Trade CS says he intends to revive the fledgling manufacturing sector mainly through allocating investors space in the current export processing zones and special economic zones even though most are still incomplete.
He said the government had allocated an investor land in Dogo Kundu that is set to be completed in 2026, Naivasha which is half way complete, Lamu where three berths have been put up but are operating at five percent capacity and Kenanie Industrial Park which is 75 percent done. The government will also allocate a physical district for the Nairobi International Finance Centre.
“Perfection is an illusion, it will find us on the way,” CS Kuria said.
