Tanzania, Kenya Looking to Solve Trade Disputes, Presidency Says

(Bloomberg) -- Tanzania and Kenya ordered officials to look into resolving “small” disagreements over trade between the East African neighbors, Tanzania’s presidency said.

President John Magufuli said he and his Kenyan counterpart, Uhuru Kenyatta, have instructed their foreign affairs and East African Community ministers to tackle the disagreements, according to a statement emailed by Magufuli’s office.

The two biggest economies in the six-member EAC, Kenya and Tanzania have recently been at odds on issues including trade of livestock and crops. In the latest incident, Tanzania burned about 5,000 day-old chicks from Kenya saying they’d been smuggled across the border, the Daily Nation, a Kenyan newspaper, reported Feb. 13.

“Some of these matters are very small,” the statement cited Magufuli as telling ministers at an EAC summit in Uganda. “Issues on shoes, clothes, wheat, gas are very small. You should solve them so that they don’t escalate.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Helen Nyambura in Nairobi at hnyambura@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Paul Richardson at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net, Michael Gunn, Renee Bonorchis

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