Businessmen try to bypass trade ban

Restrictions on trade with Somalia are likely to push Kenyan firms in Mombasa to switch to Tanzanian ports and or Djibouti to beat the ban imposed by the Kenyan government, the regional weekly ‘The EastAfrican’ says. A Mombasa-based trading company told the paper that companies had started negotiations with the Kenyan government to allow them to clear the goods they had already bought in readiness for transportation to Somalia, after President Daniel arap Moi directed the police commissioner last month to ensure no trading activities took place along the Kenya-Somalia border. According to one businessman in Mombasa, companies were attempting to “work on the logistics of shipping our goods to either Tanzanian ports or Djibouti before transhipping them to Somalia”.

The government ban has also affected the miraa (or qat a mildly narcotic shrub - Catha edulis) trade between the two countries, forcing exporters to route their cargo through Eldoret Airport, western Kenya, to Uganda’s Entebbe for onward transportation to Somalia, the report said in the paper’s 13-19 August edition. Goods worth more than an estimated US $192,307 leave Mombasa for Somalia fortnightly, the businessman said.

Dried fish from Somalia is imported in return for tea, coffee husks, cigarettes, detergents, cooking oil, petroleum products and construction materials. The businessmen told the ‘The EastAfrican’ that goods worth millions of Kenya shillings were being held in different warehouses in Mombasa since the ban was announced. Diplomatic sources told IRIN that the ban had been imposed by the Kenyan government because of concern over the increased flow of small arms into Kenya over the last eighteen months, which the Kenyan government linked to the spiralling crime. When Moi announced the ban, he said the onus was on the Transitional National Government of Somalia to behave like a national authority.