Kenya's textile exports to the US face stiff competition as the American government seeks to relax market access rules to low-cost producers from outside Africa.
In one of the proposed reforms, the US Congress is working on a rule that proposes to reform the preferential trade programme and extend the duty-free-quota-free (DFQF) status to apparel products from non-African countries such as Cambodia and Bangladesh.
The US administration is also negotiating a free trade area (FTA) with a group of Pacific countries such as Vietnam under the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
The proposed reforms come at a time when textile exports from Kenya to the US, under the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), have also dropped from a high of Sh21.7 billion ($ 272 million) in 2003 to a low of Sh14 billion last year.
The reforms follow years of sustained pressure from American businesses and nonprofit groups to replace all existing trade preference programmes with a comprehensive, unified system with two types of benefits ?? one for advanced developing countries, and a more generous one providing DFQF access to all least-developed countries irrespective of whether they are from Africa.
The combined effect of the preferential trade reform legislation and the TPP will destroy the African apparel industry that was created under Agoa, Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM) chairman Jas Bedi, said in a paper delivered to the US government at the Agoa 2010 Forum which concluded in Kansas on Friday.
