Trade Cabinet Secretary Moses Kuria has rolled out a plan to harmonise the calculation of vehicle age limit to streamline importation.
Speaking during the commissioning of the Cfao Motors Toyota Fortuner Assembly Line in Mombasa County on Saturday, July 29, the CS noted that the main agencies dealing with the importation of vehicles used different age limit calculation methods hence yielding different results.
The CS, therefore, hinted that the importers and vehicle owners bore the brunt of the differences.
For instance, Kuria revealed that the Kenya Bureau Of Standards (KEBS) calculated the age limit via a block classifying all vehicles registered between January and December of a particular year as belonging to the same group.
The National Transport and Safety Authority's (NTSA) method, however, differed because it preferred calculating a vehicle's age by the specific month of registration, which leaves no wiggle room for rounding off a few months. The taxman also applied different metrics when making the calculations.
"On the issue of the vehicle limits, we have a problem because, clearly, NTSA and KEBS, everyone has got their own definition of the vehicle.
"We are asking for harmonisation so that vehicles are deemed to be manufactured in a certain year or belong to a certain age as a block to avoid all that confusion," stated the CS.
His sentiments came two years after the Car Importers Association of Kenya (CIAK) was at loggerheads with the three main agencies over the calculation of the 8-year age limit of imported vehicles.
In 2021, a shipment comprising roughly 20,000 vehicles was withheld at the Mombasa Port for months after the agencies failed to agree on the best model to determine the eight-year limit. Most of the vehicles at the time dated back to the 2013 manufacture date.
Most of the vehicles in the shipment risked being destroyed since they had suffered delays due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“In the eight sampled documents of the vehicles being held over the age limit debate between KRA, KEBS, and NTSA, they indicate that the vehicles were shipped within the time frame but delayed to land at the port after spending more than two months in the sea as a result of Covid-19.
"Normally, it only takes about 28 days to ship a car from Japan but this time, there were delays thus causing the quagmire,” lamented CIAK national chairman Peter Otieno at the time.
In 2022, car importers under CIAK lost a suit seeking to compel the agencies to harmonise the computation of the limit. In their suit, they argued that their members incurred losses while paying duty or having their cars denied entry into Kenya despite paying all fees.
The court threw out the suit noting that the petitioners were inviting the judiciary to legislate which was the mandate of Parliament.
