By Eugenia Kindaruma
A recent tweet from Ndiritu Muriithi, chairman of the Kenya Revenue Authority board, distilled a complex negotiation into a single clarifying statement: “Not every discussion, debate or decision is win-lose. On the benchmark issue, everyone except tax-cheats wins.” That formulation, precise and unsparing, captures the essence of what has been achieved through the revised consolidated cargo framework. The genuine small trader now will pay less, while the dishonest consolidator has effectively lost his or her hiding place. Above all, the Government will recover revenue that was seeping through a widening crack.
Cargo consolidation has always been a sound idea. It was institutionalised to allow traders whose parcels cannot fill a container to pool their goods and access simplified clearance procedures. The mechanism was designed to encourage entrepreneurship among smaller players, and it has succeeded in that aim. Registered consolidators have grown from eighteen in 2018 to over one hundred in 2026, while consolidation cargo volume has risen by more than a third in three years. The facility works, and it remains a cornerstone of small-scale importation.
The difficulty has never been with the concept but with its exploitation. A minority of consolidators discovered that the minimum yield benchmark, intended as a risk-management reference, could be manipulated. High-value goods could be concealed within consolidated consignments and cleared at rates that bore no relation to their actual worth. The benchmark was never a ceiling, but rogue operators treated it as one, and the revenue loss mounted quietly while the honest trader bore the weight of suspicion.
The masterstroke in the recent engagement was the agreement on deconsolidation. Where cargo attracts duty differently, the parties accepted that it must be separated and assessed according to its proper classification and value. This single provision dismantled the loophole that had allowed tax cheats to nest expensive electronics, branded garments, and other high-duty items within general cargo consignments. No longer can a consolidator bury a flat-screen television beneath a layer of plastic buckets and expect the benchmark to launder it.
The President’s decision to lower the amount to Ksh. 2 million per 40-foot container, itself below the Ksh. 2.5 million that had applied previously, was a decisive intervention. It signalled that the state had heard the concerns of genuine small traders while refusing to surrender the fight against fraud. The revised figure is a threshold beneath which most legitimate consolidated consignments fall comfortably, and above which verification is triggered. For the honest trader, clearance will now be smoother and cheaper. For the cheat, the escape route is now firmly closed.
This is what a win-win framework looks like when it is designed intelligently. The winners are in their numbers. We shall now have a small trader who pays less, KRA that publishes a goods excluded list and re-vets consolidators, the consolidators themselves who now operate in a cleaner environment, and the public purse which recovers what was being stolen. The only losers are those who built business models on concealment and misclassification, and their loss is the nation’s gain.
The shadowy politicians who attempted to convert this technical adjustment into a theatre of grievance have been exposed. They urged traders to reject a framework that protects them, hoping to manufacture outrage for electoral purposes. The resolution now announced robs them of their script. When the genuine trader pays less and the tax cheat is being pursued, there will be nothing to protest.
Some decisions are battles between fairness and fraud, and in that contest the honest trader and the revenue authority stand on the same side. The benchmark resolution proves that consultation, when conducted in good faith, yields outcomes that no amount of street theatre could achieve.
Kindaruma is a Meru-based leadership trainer and educationist
