The Government’s plan to ban importation of used car parts in favour of the local assemblies is facing a dead end.
The move was enacted by KEBS working on recommendations by the National Automotive Policy which is still at the draft stage.
According to the NAP policy, the move to ban the second hand parts will promote Kenya as automotive manufacturing hub for East Africa and the continent at large.
However, Kenya lacks technical capacity to manufacture some critical replacement parts that will match second hand cars from Japan.
Last year, the government announced plans to set up a local assembly plant in Kikuyu, a move that did not see the light of the day.
The local vehicle assembly is also on its knees despite concerted efforts to revive it, latest of which was banning second hand vehicles importation for vehicles older than eight years and later adjusted to five years.
The exiguous performance of the local motor vehicle assembly has seen the government blame importation of car parts. Government plans to locally manufacture parts like suspension and gear parts will likely be boycotted by auto-mechanics and car owners.
“I don’t think they are being genuine and you can see the whole conspiracy from the new motor vehicle dealers to take over the spares market as well. The government is not likely to achieve much because even the salvage motor vehicles still generate a significant portion of the second-hand parts. Some of the so called new parts are fake and break down very fast,” says Munyori, an official from a lobby on second hand cars
Currently, local assemblies are producing about 5,000 vehicles annually, which is only 15% of their capacity of 34,000.
Japan-made spare parts are of high quality and car owners always prefer them to the locally made.
Kenya has about 25 vehicle part manufacturers, all of which are privately owned but only few of them manufacture the items in KEBs priority list.
In 2016, manufacturer Sameer Africa moved its tyre manufacturing business from Kenya citing tough business environment.
Despite market privilege as the only tyre manufacturer in Kenya, local imports and unfavourable business environment ejected Sameer out of business.
