Outages on the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) system have caused disruptions in operations at the Mombasa port over the course of the previous five days.
As a result, shipments of tea with a value of more than Ksh3.25 billion ($25 million) stopped at the different port facilities.
Traders in other industries are also calculating losses due to the continuous outage of the KRA’s integrated Customs Management System (iCMS), which is the only system that facilitates the submission of documentation for product importation and export.
As a result of the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) acknowledging the failure and encouraging merchants to refrain from submitting new paperwork until the system is restored, it is anticipated that the situation will become even more dire in the days ahead.
The purpose of this message is to inform all of our respected stakeholders that our online services are now inaccessible due to ongoing technical difficulties.
Clients received a notification from KRA that said, “We sincerely apologize for the difficulty that this has caused and kindly beg your patience while our technical team works to restore regular operations.”
During the tea auction that took place in Mombasa the previous week, merchants were unable to export the tea that they had sold, which resulted in huge losses with several consignments missing their planned shipments.
The head of the East African Tea Trade Association (EATTA), Arthur Sawe, made the following statement: “The outage of the KRA system has resulted in substantial losses sustained by the tea exporters, and prolonged stoppage of shipments would have severe ripple consequences at the Mombasa Tea Auction.”
Mr. Sawe asserts that failure to restore or maintain the system could result in a loss of billions of shillings for Kenya’s exports and the nine nations that participate in the Mombasa tea auction.
Peter Kimanga, the head of the Tea Buyers Association, said that a number of ships had returned without their cargo as a result of problems with the KRA clearance mechanism.
If Kenya’s government does not take immediate action to remedy the problem, the EATTA Managing Director George Omuga believes that Kenya might be categorized as a supplier that is not trustworthy if it has repeated system failures.
“As of the previous week, the warehouses were unable to release the cargo, and the port was unable to load it due to incomplete documentation. As a result, we have incurred a significant loss,” Mr. Kimanga stated.
According to Mr. Omuga, “There is an issue with the information transmission between PGAs, and as a backup plan, we need to have an alternate cargo clearing system in addition to iCMS.”
Additionally, Mr. Omuga urged that the government create a system that would allow monthly billing.
