President Uhuru Kenyatta and US President Donald Trump at the White
House in Washington, DC during an official visit August 27, 2018. FILE
PHOTO | JOAN PERERUAN | NATION MEDIA GROUP
New York,
The
Trump administration has tapped Kenya as the first sub-Saharan nation
to start talks with the US on a bilateral trade deal, the Bloomberg News agency reported on Tuesday.
The prestigious designation is expected to be announced during President Uhuru Kenyatta's visit to Washington next week, Bloomberg said.
Kenya's Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Macharia Kamau confirmed the report.
TRADE PACT
Mr Kamau told Bloomberg that the US and Kenya are aiming for significant progress towards an agreement in the coming months.
He added that President Kenyatta's Cabinet will probably approve discussions with the US this week.
Completion
of a bilateral trade pact could bring major benefits to Kenya's economy
and enhance the nation's political standing in Africa and beyond.
Trump
administration officials have previously indicated that the US wants to
forge bilateral trade deals with sub-Saharan countries as successor
arrangements to the multilateral African Growth and Opportunity Act
(Agoa) programme that is due to expire in 2025.
TRADE PARTNER
State
Department diplomats have said the US will try to hammer out on a deal
with a single sub-Saharan nation that would serve as a model for other
individual trade pacts in the region.
Kenya
ranks as the United States' sixth-biggest trade partner in the
sub-Saharan region, Bloomberg noted, with total exchanges of goods and
services between the two countries reaching nearly $1.2 billion in 2018.
Kenya
has also been one of the leading beneficiaries of the 20-year-old
African Growth and Opportunity Act which gives preferential treatment to
exports from selected countries. Agoa has been especially helpful to
Kenya's textile sector.
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