Happening Now: President of Mozambique, Felipe Nyusi arrives at State House, Nairobi for a meeting with President Kenyatta pic.twitter.com/GQdFcYPeG0
— Citizen TV Kenya (@citizentvkenya) November 21, 2018
The President of Mozambique, Filipe Nyusi has arrived in State House ahead of his meeting with President Uhuru Kenyatta today. According to Cabinet Secretary Monica Juma, the two Presidents are expected to hold talks that will eliminate double taxation and lift visa restrictions.
CS Monica Juma and her Mozambique counterpart Jose Antonio Pachecho have since constituted a Joint Commission of Cooperation tasked with this mandate.
“The double taxation agreement is still under consideration, it’s one of the areas that we expect finalization in the next couple of months and we hope that by the time we come to the second JCC meeting there will be a lot of projects registered,” she said.
The two countries, Kenya and Mozambique are working on modalities to lift visa restrictions. Over the years, trade between the two countries has continued grow with Kenya’s total export to Mozambique increasing from $ 6.61 million in 2007 to $ 11.8 million in 2017.
Kenya’s major exports to Mozambique include prefabricated buildings, plastic items, animal and vegetable fats, tableware, kitchenware, fruit and vegetable juices among others while imports from Mozambique include sugar, molasses and honey, aluminium, coal and non-ferrous base metal among others.
In March this year, President Uhuru Kenyatta travelled to Maputo, Mozambique for talks on fostering trade, boosting relations and the blue economy. During the visit, the two leaders signed two broad agreements covering political and economic cooperation that were aimed at bringing closer cooperation between Kenya and Mozambique.
President Kenyatta said the that the two agreements would kick-start relations that would link the Swahili Coast from Maputo to Lamu.
Kenya and Mozambique also resolved to broaden their cooperation areas of mutual interest including the minerals and mining sector, livestock breeding, trade, tourism promotion, agri-business, manufacturing and value addition, and the Blue economy sector seeing as Mozambique has a very developed blue economy.
The visit of President Nyusi comes just a few days before the Sustainable Blue Economy Conference to be held in Nairobi. According to CS Juma, 11,000 delegates have already confirmed their participation at the Conference that will commence on 26th November 2018.
The Sustainable Blue Economy Conference (SBEC) is the first global conference on sustainable blue economy. It aims to harness the potential of oceans, seas and rivers to improve lives.
What do you think is the biggest obstacle preventing Kenya from having a developed blue economy?