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Will ban on leather imports increase local production?

What you need to know:

  • Tanzania leads in the number of cattle slaughtered every year for their hides and other by- products followed by Kenya.

Arusha. Will a ban on leather products' imports boost the struggling leather industry in East Africa which imports 20 million pairs of shoes annually?

Another proposal is to halt export of raw hides and skins from the region where about millions of raw leader pieces go to waste each year as they could not be processed.

This is a million dollar question as the East African Legislative Assembly (Eala) gears to debate a motion from a Kenyan law maker during its coming session in Kigali.

Daniel Ole Sankok says the ban of both raw exports and imports of manufactured leather goods was necessary in order to develop the domestic leather industry.

"The heavy importation of used shoes and other leather products constrains the development of the local leather and footwear industry,” he said here on Tuesday.

He told The Citizen he intends to table the Motion during an Eala sitting slated for Kigali later this month to enable the region to tap the full potential of the sector.

The East African Community (EAC) Council of Ministers and the partner states would be urged to ban export of raw leather and importation of manufactured products of the same.

The motion was to be tabled during an Eala plenary sitting which ended in Arusha on Wednesday but has been pushed to another date due to overloaded schedules.

Mr Sankok said although the leather and footwear value chain in the EAC was larger than the combined value of meat, coffee and tea, it yielded little to the economies.

The comparative advantages for the region included a huge livestock population that has the capacity to feed the leather and footwear industries.

Yet about 80 percent of the demand of footwear to the region is met through imports of used shoes and leather products.

This, he says, limits the scope and potential for the development of the domestic leather and footwear industry in the seven-nation bloc.

"Banning the export of raw hides and skins by the partner states will ensure availability of essential raw materials for the existing tanneries,” he pointed out.

Uganda, the Kenyan lawmaker told this newspaper, was the only EAC country where there is a total ban on export of raw hides and skins.

"All other partner states apply 80 percent export tax on raw hides and skins, a measure which can lead to increased investment in tanneries,” he pointed out.

According to Mr Sankok, Tanzania leads in the number of cattle slaughtered every year for their hides and other by- products followed by Kenya.

A total of 3.9 million are slaughtered in the country annually followed by Kenya (2.5 million), DR Congo (two million) and Uganda 1.5 million.

South Sudan slaughters about one million animals annually, trailed by Rwanda (500,000) while Burundi trails the list with only about 100,000; making a total of 11.5 million.

Leather is one of the most traded agro-based commodities in the world, with an annual market value of $200 billion.

The East African leather industry represents about 0.24 percent of the $200billion global market value, according to the Nairobi-based Centre for Business Information and Training (CBiT).

It has annual revenue of $478 million, comprising $106.4 million in wet blue and $372 million in finished leather.

East Africa's leather industry's share of the global market for leather contributes a modest 0.28 percent of the region's Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Nevertheless, according to Ms Beatrice Mwasi, CBiT director the EAC global share of the leather market had been on decline.

“This negative trend does not reflect the true potential in the sector, as resources such as the region’s large population of cows, sheep and goats - estimated at 150 million animals in 2013,” she said.