@murchr, Ever taken a look at those mutumba labels? Quite few have 'Made in US/UK/Italy/France etc. They read China, , , and then some South East Asian countries.

There's a reason why the first world is dressed by the Asian countries, with quality garments.

If we strive to make quality garments locally, the costs will outweigh the benefits.
The quality that Chinese export to US/UK/Canada is not the same that comes to Africa or consumed in China.

The surest way to go is AGOA, Americans have the purchasing power to buy quality products from Kenya which very few Kenyans can afford.

The issue of mitumba clothes is more complex than it is appreciated by any lobbyist. The real threat to Kenya's textile industry is the importation of cheap sub-standard products from China and South East Asia.
The sort of clothes that fade in two months time.The shirts, the women suits [i abhor them].

As it stands, the cheap brand new imports are the greatest threat to our textile industry. Atleast mtumba brings in punitive taxes to the gov't, that cannot be said about brand new cheap imports.

Mutumba is in no direct competition with "Made in Kenya" apparel.
If your walk into any shop on Biashara Street selling baby stuff, how many items can 1,000 bob buy? How many items can that get you in Gikomba?
Use them for 3 months [from Biz street and the other from Giks] and compare the quality.
Value for money.
Same as using local contractors to do shoody job on our roads in the name of local.
What is better? Value for money or local no matter the quality?

On the flip side,a country that struggles to feed itself, is it not wiser to grow food crops, rather than cotton?
Do we import Sugar? Rice? Maize? Eggs?
Do we have mitumba sugar? rice? maize? egg?
Why do we import?
Why are the imports cheaper?
How much cotton do we need to dress Kenya? 90,000 tons on average per year?
How many people will the textiles industry employ?
How much does an EPZ employee earn now?
How much does a mtumba retailer earn now?

Let's not bite every bait thrown our way, textile industry is NOT a strategic sector and push to kill mtumba AS THINGS STAND, will be detrimental.

@murchr, Mtumba clothing falls under textiles.
Check the part in blue,that answers why we have mtumba clothing.
There is very little mtumba from China. The mtumba from the developed world happens to have been made in China [majority of it].
Americans are focusing on hi-tech products. Those are kind of products that they'll be competitive in, Chinese cheap labor won't beat that.
Common clothing is NOT hi-tech by any measure.

My argument is, let's start with the basics before we go clothing on EMPTY stomachs as well as EMPTY pockets.

@mkeiyd you nailed it, @muchr, please get up from the arm chair and strip down this policy thinking. You are looking at our problems like a a government officer, policies are enablers but the real work has to happen. We are arguing the real work. The rationale for AGOA is simple, some of the lower end Giorgio Armani clothes for the US market are made at EPZ. Now Imagine if they were being made with locally produced cotton and land in the states at lower prices, it can only encourage more US clothing manufacturers to come and produce in Kenya. Right now they rely on fabric sourced from Asia which is subjected to duties at Mombasa.

What we ought to be investigating is required interventions to get our cotton industry up and running soonest. You can imagine for an agricultural crop you have a ready market, you land and what you are lacking is seeds and information....how hard is it to fix that?

Why Kenya is primed for economic take-off
>>> http://www.businessdailyafrica....38/-/ccnkpp/-/index.html

Been watching this debate from the sidelines. There's one thing that perplexes me: Why are some of the imported commodities (e.g. textiles, sugar, etc) cheaper than their locally produced counterparts? What is it that some of these source countries do right and why can't we replicate the same here? I wanna believe subsidies is not the full story.

1. Production costs - Brought about by energy costs, lack of superior technology(eg Webuye paper mills) or the lack of it. For crops the cost of raw material, fertilizer or the know how to go about production, variety of rawmaterial that would get higher yields etc

2. Poor infrastructure - Consider places with no roads or rail network. (Do you remember Kibaki's 2002 campaign) .

3. Subsidies yes...tena sana in form of grants etc.

4. Tax rebates
5. Unions...Remember when some tea farms wanted to introduce machines to pick tea and Atwoli went bananas? Some unions cripple organizations completely
6. Because most of our farmers are small scale farmers, they don't benefit from the economies of scale that may arise from production in large quantities. That's why they are encouraged to form sacco's and do communal farming. eg Kakuzi, mboi kamiti

Na kathalika

Everything is possible

The World Bank and the World Economic Forum (WEF) have rated Kenya as the highest country in Sub-Saharan Africa in terms of economic policies and institutions, making the country one of the hottest destinations of foreign investment.
http://www.capitalfm.co....best-africa-world-bank/