How Inadequate Structural and Trade Policy Reforms in the Kenya Sugar Industry Have Threatened Its Survival in the Common Market of East and Southern African Region (Comesa)

This paper examined why certain sectors have either delayed or halted regional trade liberalization because of domestic economic challenges in their sectors. Though the WTO promotes formation of regional blocs, questions abound, whether ‘complete’ trade liberalization really exists in regional blocs. The Kenya sugar industry, for instance, has delayed sugar trade liberalization in the COMESA region for some time.  This paper interrogated how trade policy applied in the Kenya sugar industry contribute to the industry’s inefficiency and lack of self sufficiency, and regional liberalization as a whole. Many a scholar has argued that an industry should realize a certain level of economic maturity before being integrated into regional or the global economy. On several occasions, Kenya has postponed the full integration of its sugar industry into regional sugar economy. The argument given is that the Kenya domestic industry is not ready for regional competition, and thus need time to reorganize and revamp it into a world class sugar industry. But despite several efforts, realizing this has been rather difficult. The researcher used questionnaires and interviews to collect primary data. Data was analyzed by use of descriptive statistics such as tables, frequencies and percentages, and presented in form of graph, pie charts and tables. The Kenya sugar industry lacked selected mercantilist trade policy that would otherwise propel it into a regional competitor and stakeholders agreed that it was time to change strategy. The findings of the study revealed that trade policy that apply to a sector determined its level of maturity and preparedness for either regional or global economic competition. The industry lacked support from the government in terms of fair taxation and infrastructure. Therefore, trade policy applied in the Kenya sugar industry was yet to promote self-sufficiency and efficiency in the industry, and its subsequent integration in regional sugar economy.