How single-window policy locks exporters out of global trade

Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service (Kephis) inspectors check a consignment of horticultural products for export at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport exit point. [Muriithi Mugo, Standard]

Although Kenya has used the single-window system to highlight how simple it is to conduct business there, manufacturers do not share this sentiment.

They claim that there is still fragmentation in the policy environment. This has been observed in their export enterprises, where a single window is crucial.

By consolidating all trade-related services onto a single platform for simpler documentation and clearance of goods, the single window system is meant to help companies in the export-import sector.

However, a report published by the Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM) highlights how the nation's trade policies, including the establishment of the single window system, continue to fail export-oriented companies.

According to the report, this disparity results from a mismatch in the development and implementation of trade and industrial policies.

The existence of several agencies, each with its own portal, is one way that this mismatch is evident and renders the single-window system virtually meaningless.

According to KAM's Kenya Export Competitiveness report, "exporters still interact with multiple agencies for a single shipment, face long documentary lead times, and confront county-by-county variation in fees and procedures that raise costs and uncertainty."

The report characterises the country's agency coordination as disjointed, drawing comparisons with Singapore, Chile, Vietnam, Tanzania, and Rwanda.

It describes how Kenya's system has limited end-to-end workflow integration and requires a lot of documents and portals.

Singapore, Vietnam, and Chile, on the other hand, take pride in their unified single-window systems with integrated agency workflows and shared data.

“Rwanda and Tanzania have simplified procedures and lowered coordination burdens,” the report says.

Although the National Trade Policy aims to provide exporters with a single "one government" interface, according to KAM, companies actually need to obtain clearances from customs, standards, plant health, the environment, and other agencies, frequently through different systems and portals.

“Even with the trade single-window platform in place, exporters still contend with numerous permits and approvals, and process times remain significantly longer than in best practice peers, limiting the gains from digitisation and trade facilitation reforms,” KAM says in the report.

According to KAM's comparison, the processing and clearance of export documents takes an average of 11 days. For the majority of processed shipments, it takes less than a day in Singapore and roughly three days in Vietnam. This takes five to six days in Tanzania and Rwanda.

According to KAM's report, Kenya's policy landscape is based on strong, multi-level frameworks, but misalignment and duplication between governmental levels make it difficult to implement them.

“The National Trade Policy set out a vision to transform into a competitive, export-led, and efficient domestic economy; however, institutional fragmentation and the slow establishment of key coordination bodies have diluted this intent,” the report says.

Instead of a single "one government" interface, exporters now have to deal with several overlapping agencies.

As a result, compared to both best practice and regional peers, Kenyan exporters operate within a more dispersed, slower, and less locally supported trade facilitation system. This highlights shortcomings in process design, implementation, and coordination.

“These implantation gaps feed directly into the higher delivered prices and slower lead times,” the report says.

Export policy and industrial policy are at odds, according to the report. These two sets of policies are being implemented independently rather than as two sides of the same coin.

“Export policy has focused on opening markets and promoting products through preferential trade agreements (PTAs), trade missions, and promotion agencies without systematically ensuring that firms can produce at costs and scales that meet those markets," says KAM.

However, many fiscal, energy, logistics, and standards decisions that impact factories have not undergone an explicit export-competitiveness test, despite the fact that industrial policy has prioritised capacity, investment, and sector plans.

The outcome, according to the report, is a high-ambition, low-execution trap: exporters encounter input tax structures, energy tariffs, logistics costs, and regulatory regimes that are set in parallel policy tracks and frequently undermine the very industrial capacity Kenya is attempting to build, despite hearing strong messages about market access and opportunities.

The report says, "Export policy is not yet the external face of industrial policy; instead, firms experience two partially disconnected systems that meet only at the factory gate, where the combined effect shows up as a national cost and credibility wedge."