The Kenya Revenue Authority has in the last three months cleared 11 containers from the cargo transit shed launched last year in November.
This, according to the Kenya Railway Corporation, has brought in an appropriate revenue of Sh.23 million.
At the same time, the corporation has on Wednesday launched the National Cargo De-consolidation Centre-Nairobi (NCDC-Nairobi), that was inspected by President Uhuru Kenyatta.
This is an expansion the transit shed which was launched last year in November by the president.
In a statement by Kenya Railways, the new warehouse is set to enhance storage capacity to handle cargo for small traders within Nairobi and its environs and has so far served more than 200 traders
“With the expansion of the facility, the government expects to serve five times the number of traders and clear more containers,” reads the statement.
By this, it is anticipated that KRA will be able to enhance its revenue collection mandate.
The establishment of the NCDC-Nairobi is part of the government initiatives to bring services closer to taxpayers and facilitate them to conduct their business effectively and efficiently.
NCDC-Nairobi is expected to enhance capacity of De-consolidated cargo from the initial five (5) 40 foot containers to (15) 40 foot containers.
A 40 ft container can have up to 25 small traders importing varied goods as consolidated cargo.
This means that the facility will serve up to approximately 400 small traders in a day.
KRA recently gazette the new facility as one of its national de-consolidation and cargo clearance centres in the country.
This means that small traders will now find it easier to clear and collect their cargo at NCDC-Nairobi.
At the same time, the new warehouse will be operating on a 24 hour basis, taking approximately 15 hours to transit cargo from the Port of Mombasa through the railway to the KRC Transit Shed.
According to Kenya Railway, cargo clearance time will also be enhanced while the last mile cost will be reduced.
The Corporation borne the container rent charges while traders will incur minimum or no demurrage costs due to the speedy clearance process minimizing overall cost of doing business.
Going further, it will be expected that the number of containers being cleared at the NCDC-Nairobi will increase to approximately 300 containers per month during the post Covid period.
This will enable KRA to collect revenue worth Sh.1 billion.
Through KEBS, the government has also revised the inspection fees from 5% to 0.6% and provided a railway link to the new Transit Shed.
In addition, The government has established a One Stop Centre through an enhanced automated system and developed a cargo tracking code integrated with the KPA system to monitor end to end movement of cargo.
This will improve efficiency at the NCDC-Nairobi facility.