{"id":807,"date":"2015-02-04T13:00:36","date_gmt":"2015-02-04T12:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/?p=807"},"modified":"2016-10-28T13:14:43","modified_gmt":"2016-10-28T12:14:43","slug":"time-to-trade-across-east-africa-borders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/2015\/02\/04\/time-to-trade-across-east-africa-borders\/","title":{"rendered":"Trading Times Across East African Borders"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My young friend Giovanni came back from a visit to East Africa last week. As part of the trip, he traveled by car<strong> from Uganda to Kenya. <\/strong>This involves crossing the<strong> Malaba border <\/strong>where trucks can wait\u00a0anywhere<strong> from 2 days to 2 weeks. <\/strong>But the driver was an expert at\u00a0crossing this border<strong><strong>,<\/strong> <\/strong>so they only had to wait about 3 hours.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Comparatively, the time it takes to trade across East Africa borders is not really, all that long<\/strong>, <strong>and\u00a0East African countries are taking important measures to improve things further.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_809\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-809\" style=\"width: 745px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2015\/02\/IMG_39971.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-809\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2015\/02\/IMG_39971-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"Tracks crossing the Uganda-Kenya Malaba border\" width=\"745\" height=\"559\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2015\/02\/IMG_39971-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2015\/02\/IMG_39971-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2015\/02\/IMG_39971-624x468.jpg 624w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 745px) 100vw, 745px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-809\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Trucks crossing the Uganda-Kenya Malaba border<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Clearing customs and going through inspections is only one of the <strong>steps involved in export and import trading.<\/strong> Other steps include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>obtaining, filling out, and submitting the necessary documents;<\/li>\n<li>inland transport and handling (see related post on <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/2014\/07\/02\/intra-african-trade-and-transportation\/\">intra-African trade and transportation<\/a>);<\/li>\n<li>potentially, port and terminal handling.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In addition to\u00a0the time physically needed to carry out\u00a0these\u00a0steps, there is waiting time to consider. This is what the World Bank does to estimate the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.doingbusiness.org\/data\/exploretopics\/trading-across-borders\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>average time required to export and import<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0across 189 countries. Below is the total length of time required for East African countries (estimated in June 2014):<\/p>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>Country<\/strong><\/td>\n<td>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>Days to export<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>Days to import<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>Tanzania<\/strong><\/td>\n<td>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">18<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<td>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">26<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>Kenya<\/strong><\/td>\n<td>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">26<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<td>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">26<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>Rwanda<\/strong><\/td>\n<td>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">26<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<td>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">27<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>Uganda<\/strong><\/td>\n<td>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">28<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<td>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">31<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: center\">\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><strong>Burundi<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: center\">32<\/td>\n<td>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">43<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>Here\u00a0are some\u00a0<strong>reference points<\/strong> for other countries:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Minimum<\/strong> time to<strong> export:<\/strong> 6 days (Denmark, Estonia, Hong Kong (China), Singapore, USA)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Minimum <\/strong>time to<strong> import:<\/strong> 4 days (Singapore)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Maximum<\/strong> time to <strong>export<\/strong>: 86 days (Afghanistan)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Maximum<\/strong> time to <strong>import<\/strong>: 91 days (Afghanistan)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Things have improved<\/strong> in recent years.<a href=\"http:\/\/www.doingbusiness.org\/reforms\/overview\/topic\/trading-across-borders\" target=\"_blank\"> A variety of reforms<\/a> have been implemented to speed up wating\u00a0times. For instance (and as reported by the World Bank):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Tanzania <\/strong>has\u00a0implemented the Pre-Arrival Declaration (PAD) system and electronic submission of customs declarations;<\/li>\n<li><strong>Kenya <\/strong>has\u00a0implemented an electronic cargo tracking system and linked this system to the Kenya Revenue Authority\u2019s electronic data interchange system for customs clearance.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Rwanda <\/strong>has made\u00a0administrative changes such as expanded operating hours and enhanced border cooperation and it has eliminated some documentation requirements; extended customs opening hours and it has implemented and improved electronic data interchange and risk-based inspection systems and made improvements in the transport sector.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Uganda <\/strong>has\u00a0reduced the time required for trading across borders through expanded operating hours at the port of Mombasa and made improvements to customs processes and border cooperation.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Burundi has<\/strong>\u00a0scaled up the use of electronic data interchange systems, introduced a more efficient system for monitoring goods going through transit countries and improved border coordination with neighboring transit countries.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Have\u00a0you (or your goods) ever crossed these borders?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My young friend Giovanni came back from a visit to East Africa last week. As part of the trip, he traveled by car from Uganda to Kenya. This involves crossing the Malaba border where trucks can wait\u00a0anywhere from 2 days to 2 weeks. But the driver was an expert at\u00a0crossing this border, so they only [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1654,"featured_media":968,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99579,492,77626],"tags":[80774,351,45502,121,80751,951,1231,1340,1376,19445,12568,1394],"class_list":["post-807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-african-economic-and-institutional-context","category-development","category-entrepreneurship-in-africa","tag-african-economic-regions","tag-burundi","tag-east-africa","tag-economic-growth","tag-internacionalization","tag-kenya","tag-rwanda","tag-tanzania","tag-trade","tag-transportation","tag-travel","tag-uganda","megacategoria-mc-africa","megacategoria-mc-strategy"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1654"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=807"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1702,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807\/revisions\/1702"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}