January 07, 2007	Sunday	Zilhaj 16, 1427

NAIROBI, Jan 6: Kenya on Saturday denied it had stopped Pakistani rice sales into the east African country, saying it had only tightened its standards.

Rice exports from Pakistan have been halted for the past two weeks after Kenyan trade authorities blocked shipments over quality concerns and stopped issuing certificates of approval, exporters said last week.

That position is not true, David Nalo, Kenya's permanent secretary in the Ministry of Trade, told a news conference.

Nalo said most of the Pakistani rice exports into Kenya had no quality problems. He said Pakistan accounted for 90 per cent of Kenya’s rice imports.

The issue is with grades 8 and 9, which cannot be downgraded without compromising our quality standards, he said.

Nalo said the Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS) was tightening its standards and requirements to protect local consumers from health and environmental risks from food imports.The state-run KEBS is also tightening import requirements in other industries including the import of motor vehicles and second-hand clothes.

Pakistan is the leading importer of Kenya's tea and any blockade of its exports of rice usually sparks a retaliatory measure from Islamabad on tea shipments.

But Nalo was confident the matter would be resolved soon.

We do not want to engage in a trade war with Pakistan, he said, adding that a Pakistani trade delegation was due to visit Kenya next week to resolve the issue.

Pakistan annually exports over 200,000 tons of Irri-6 rice to Kenya. Before the quality dispute emerged, it had sold 90,000 tons of Irri-6.

Kenya fills 50 per cent of Pakistan's annual tea demand of around 170 million kg. Tea is Kenya's top foreign exchange earner.-Reuters

Adds our reporter from Islamabad: A three-member delegation of Rice Exporters Association of Pakistan (REAP) will leave next week for Kenya in order to try and resolve rice shipment being stopped on the basis of allegedly substandard quality.

Informed sources told Dawn on Saturday that the delegation would meet the Kenyan customs authorities and Kenya Bureau of Standards to find the permanent solution to the issue of low quality that had been alleged as a reason for blocking rice shipment from Pakistan to Kenya.

Exporters to Kenya claimed that the rice is fully fit for human consumption despite the reportedly higher under milled and paddy content which is per agreement between buyer and sellers and also within the specification of Pakistan Standards Institute.

The sources said that it was believed that some Pakistani exporters who also had their offices in Kenya may have engineered the situation in order to maximise their profits by restricting supplies in the short term, which could result in higher price in Kenya.

A senior official in the commerce ministry told Dawn that there was no issue of standard with Kenya as almost all issues had been resolved recently. He said that almost all the containers withheld earlier were released.

Replying a query he said that Pakistani High Commission had been asked to investigate the issue and find the reasons for this blockage of Pakistani rice containers.