Kenya has started offering tax incentives to clothing companies, a key part of its under-performing manufacturing sector, to create jobs and provide affordable new clothes for shoppers.
Executives in the textiles industry said the changes included allowing them to sell twenty percent of their annual production locally without sales taxes and without paying import duties on the materials and equipment used to produce the garments.
The advent of cheap, second-hand clothes imports from the U.S. and Europe in the 1980s has put local apparel firms out of business and killed production of raw materials like cotton.
The planning minister, Mwangi Kiunjuri, has however said they are dealing with the difficulties by implementing new policies to encourage firms to boost production and hire more people.
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