Revival of State-owned trade agency has firms on edge

A Ukrainian vessel offloads wheat donation to Kenya in November last year. Kenya National Trading Corporation will distribute the wheat on behalf of the government. [Omondi Onyango, Standard]

Until recently, the Kenya National Trading Corporation (KNTC) passed for another nondescript State agency, a parastatal whose best days were possibly in the past.

In its glory days, the State-owned trading agency was the sole wholesaler and distributor of salt, sugar, cement, bicycles and other products. Its monopoly was, however, broken with the liberalisation of the economy in the early 1990s.