Kenya and Uganda have agreed to strengthen trade relations in the latest move to boost economic bonding.
This was announced recently by Kenyan President, William Ruto, and as a result, he endorsed Uganda’s dairy products to be supplied to Kenya.
In his recent meeting with Kenyan manufacturers, Ruto urged Uganda to continue exporting milk to Kenya because it’s of good quality, highly nutritious and cost-effective.
“I recommend our brothers in Uganda to continue exporting milk to Kenya because it’s highly nutritious and cost-effective, which is advantageous to us Kenyans,” Mr. Ruto said.
He also said that Kenya should focus on strengthening trade ties with Uganda in order to boost its products in the East African and world markets.
According to Ruto, the attitude of introducing restrictions on milk imports from Uganda to protect Kenya’s indigenous milk producers is instead denying Kenya more opportunities to both import and export products. He added that this creates separations with neighbors and stretches international relations.
He confirmed that Kenya has a huge market in the East African Community (EAC) and the African continental free trade area that she can easily exploit rather than creating misunderstandings with Uganda over milk products.
Mr. Ruto assured Uganda and Kenya of improving the milk value chain. He said that the programme of having 660 milk coolers to add value to Kenya’s milk will be reinstated.
Ruto’s statements follow the Kenya Dairy Board that declined to issue permits to Uganda’s milk product exporters in 2020, which caused a huge loss of over Ugx100 billion, thus hurting Uganda’s milk value.