Wednesday, May 7, 2014
MIRAA traders are eyeing China and hope Kenya will secure a bilateral deal to export to the Asian country when Chinese PM Li Keqiang visits on Friday.
Kimathi Munjuri, the marketing and strategic planning manager for Sakijo International, the exporting agency of the product, said the government should use the upcoming visit to Kenya by Keqiang to sign a bilateral agreement that will allow locally grown miraa to be sold in China.
The traders last week lost a court case in London that sought to stop an impending ban in UK. “Chinese market is a preserve of the Ethiopian government. The country has a bilateral deal with China and only miraa grown in Ethiopia is exported to China at the moment,” Munjuri said.
In his inaugural visit to Africa that kicked off yesterday, Keqiang will tour Angola, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Kenya. Having run into headwinds in Europe where Netherlands banned sale of miraa and UK is also preparing to also outlaw it, local traders fear massive loss in revenue and prompting search for new markets.
While the industry has recently started exporting to Mozambique and Malawi, volumes sold in these two countries are too low to fully compensate for the loss of the UK market when the ban takes effect. According to Sakijo International, only one tonne is exported to the two African countries weekly compared to 20 tonnes to UK.
“Miraa sales follow the Somali diaspora,” said Munjuri adding that the high number of immigrants from Arab countries and of Somali origin that reside in China make the market lucrative. “Last month we launched an appeal to have our products exported there through the embassy of China in Nairobi but we have not gotten any feedback yet,” Munjuri told the Star.
China has become a major trading partner to Kenya with a number of the bilateral business deals revolving around infrastructure and resource related projects. UK is the sole major export market for miraa.
Source: The Star