The price of sugar is set to decrease as 21,000 tons of duty-free sugar from Thailand dock at the port of Mombasa.
Ordinarily, the importation of the commodity would incur a 50 per cent duty fee.
The ship manifest from the port indicates that the initial vessel, San Nicolas, carrying 21,000 tonnes from Thailand, has arrived, with a second vessel, Sheng Heng Hai, expected to dock on March 1. However, the volume it carries remains undisclosed. Since the government granted a waiver last year, these imports mark the first duty-free consignments of maize, sugar, and rice to arrive in the country.
In December, the government created an import opportunity to address an anticipated sugar shortage in Kenya that caused the cost of the commodity to rise to KES 312 for a two-kilo packet by allowing traders to bring 100,000 tonnes from outside the Common Market for the Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) region.
In addition, the Kenya National Trading Corporation (KNTC) has been permitted to import an extra 200,000 tonnes of sugar without paying duty. By the end of the year, Kenya is expected to have imported at least 300,000 tonnes of the commodity from outside the Comesa region.
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