Tuesday, September 3, 2024 - Environment Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale has exposed top Chinese and Indian companies over illegal logging of immature trees from the country and exporting them to their countries before coming to resale them as finished products in the country.
The expose comes days after
Duale declared a ban on the exportation of the robusta eucalyptus tree bark to
other countries to protect local forests in the country after arguing
that the trade contributed to deforestation.
According to Duale, the rogue
Chinese and Indians take advantage of the level of poverty to convince the small
traders in Kenya to log immature trees and buy them at small amounts of money
while they benefit from the sale after doing a value addition to the trees
before re-exporting them to ship-making companies in Kenya at high prices.
The CS told the media that Kenya
loses billions of shillings from the illegal trade of trees to the mentioned
countries as a result of a lack of regulatory frameworks.
According to reports from
official documents from the trade sector, one of the mentioned companies
exported 420,000 on July 10, this year alone.
Duale said that the exports were
largely aided by the small duty imposed on the exportation of the tree
products.
He also called on the need to
protect local small-scale Kenyan traders from the economic exploitation by the
foreign companies who took advantage of them.
According to the CS, the
exportation is a risk to the government's afforestation plans of planting
15 billion trees in the country by 2030.
The ban comes just a week after
the CS ordered an immediate ban on the export of raw veneer materials, a
move he said was aimed at safeguarding the country’s environmental
future.
The Kenyan DAILY POST
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