Imported Products Flood the Market as Duty Collections Grow by 5.9%

According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) Economic Survey 2018, import duty collected on selected categories of commodities grew by 5.9 percent to 84.2 billion shillings in 2017 from 79.5 billion shillings in 2016.

This reflects the rate at which Kenyan’s are importing products from other countries as policies become friendlier to business people.

Foods, drinks, and tobacco are amongst the products whose importation have grown significantly accounting for the largest collections on import duty making up 28.7 percent of the total import duty collections. The import duty collection of the products grew from 18,540.89 million shillings in 2016 to 24,184.56 million shillings in 2017.

Graph by Rahab Mbiriti

As shown in the graph above, import duty collections continue to grow over the last 5 years.