President William Ruto convened a high-level stakeholder engagement forum at the Port of Mombasa over the weekend and announced a series of operational directives designed to overhaul efficiency at Kenya's principal maritime gateway. The forum brought together officials from multiple government agencies and private sector entities responsible for cargo clearance and trade facilitation.
24/7 Operations Mandate for Cargo Clearance Agencies
Ruto issued a direct order requiring the Kenya Bureau of Standards, Kenya Revenue Authority, and the National Transport and Safety Authority to maintain continuous, round-the-clock operations at the port. The three agencies form the core of the cargo clearance ecosystem, handling product certification, customs duty assessment, and vehicle safety documentation respectively. Financial institutions connected to the trade process chain received comparable instructions to ensure customers can complete payment transactions at any hour. The President's directive was explicit: agencies must match the port's extended operating schedule to eliminate the bottlenecks that accumulate when clearance offices operate on conventional business hours.
90-Day E-Citizen Integration Deadline
The Head of State set a firm 90-day deadline for all Partner Government Agencies to consolidate their individual information systems onto the national E-Citizen platform. Multiple fragmented systems currently manage documentation across different regulatory bodies, creating manual handoffs and data silos that slow cargo throughput. "There are so many systems in use at the port," Ruto stated. "Since we are consolidating all our digital framework on E-Citizen, we should mobilize and harmonize the different systems to ensure they speak to each other and remove silos so that we can create a lot more efficiency." The integration effort targets synchronized data exchange between agencies to enable single-window processing for importers, exporters, and transit operators.
Weighbridge Consolidation Along the Northern Corridor
Trade operators had raised persistent concerns about non-tariff barriers along the Northern Corridor, Kenya's primary overland trade route serving Uganda, South Sudan, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Multiple weighbridge stops, county-level Cess fees imposed on transporters, and safety hazards along the corridor compound transit times and operating costs. In response, Ruto announced that cargo destined for transit markets will undergo weighing at only two points: at the entry checkpoint at either the port or Mariakani, and at the Malaba border crossing on exit. This reduction from multiple stopping points to a two-stop protocol aims to accelerate transit and lower costs for trucking companies serving landlocked regional markets.
Bunkering Services and Customs Controls
Ruto also directed the Kenya Ports Authority and Kenya Revenue Authority to develop joint control measures for vessel bunkering services at Kenyan ports. The framework must simultaneously prevent customs duty leakage on marine fuels and ensure reliable availability of bunker supplies for international shipping. This dual mandate addresses revenue protection concerns while supporting competitive service delivery for vessels calling at Mombasa and other Kenyan ports.
The directives follow the establishment of an Intergovernmental Steering Committee on Ease of Doing Business in May, chaired by Cabinet Secretaries Kipchumba Murkomen of Roads and Transport, Moses Kuria of Investment, Trade and Industry, and Salim Mvurya of Mining, Maritime and Blue Economy. The committee was formed to diagnose coordination failures, regulatory overlaps, and procedural bottlenecks impeding port performance, with implementation of its recommendations now visibly underway.