Kenya Might Have Lost Ksh 432B in Taxes From China Imports
Container loading in cargo freight ship. Photo: Courtesy
Kenya might have lost Ksh 431.9 billion in revenue from imports from China in less than a year.
There is disparity in the value of imports from China comparing tax reports captured by the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) of Kenya and the General Administration of Customs of the People’s Republic of China (GACC), an equivalent of KRA in the Asian economic giant.
The GACC website shows that the goods exported from China to Kenya for the last 10 months were valued at KSh 809.4 billion, a figure way above the valuation by KRA.
The imports from the Asian country attract levies that include import duty, value-added tax (VAT), excise duty, import declaration fees (IDF), and the railway development levy (RDL).
Official KRA data, as published by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), has valued imports from China at KSh377.5 billion during this period.
The disparity could arise from some of the cargo coming to East African countries, including Uganda, South Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Also, the variance could be the result of humongous volumes of goods disguised as cargo in transit by unscrupulous business persons that end up in the country and are later exported to various countries in the region after evading customs.
President William Ruto’s administration has prioritized the use of technology and enhanced data analytics at the ports and tax control centers to scale up tax collection to KSh3 trillion in the upcoming financial year.
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