Kenya has finalised negotiations \u200bover a trade deal with China, two months after \u200cannouncing a preliminary agreement that would grant the East African country duty-free access to the Chinese market, President William Ruto said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
In \u200bJanuary Kenya said the\u00a0preliminary\u00a0deal would give 98% of its exports \u200bduty-free access to the large Chinese market.<\/p>\n
East Africa’s \u2060biggest economy has been forging closer ties with China, with \u200bRuto making a state visit to Beijing last year during \u200bwhich a number of financing and cooperation agreements were signed. The two countries’ bilateral trade is currently heavily tilted in favour of China.<\/p>\n
“We \u200bhave this week finalised negotiations with the Government of \u200bthe People’s Republic of China on a bilateral trade agreement,” Ruto told \u200ca \u2060conference aimed at attracting international investment.<\/p>\n
Kenya is also a close ally of Washington and\u00a0is negotiating\u00a0a separate bilateral trade accord with the Trump administration.<\/p>\n
Ruto has defended his administration’s courting \u200bof China against \u200bcriticism from \u2060some U.S. officials, saying Kenya has to export more goods to the huge Asian economy \u200bto close the trade gap.<\/p>\n
Ruto said on \u200bWednesday that \u2060the Kenyan economy had been resilient in the past year, with inflation and the shilling currency stable.<\/p>\n
Foreign direct investment exceeded $2 \u2060billion \u200bfor the first time in 2025, \u200bup over 15% on the previous year, he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kenya has finalised negotiations \u200bover a trade deal with China, two months after \u200cannouncing a preliminary agreement that would grant the East African country duty-free access to the Chinese market, President William Ruto said on Wednesday. In \u200bJanuary Kenya said the\u00a0preliminary\u00a0deal would give 98% of its exports \u200bduty-free access to the large Chinese market. East […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16118,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":9,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,32,2362],"tags":[396,111,490],"class_list":["post-20262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-economy","category-featured","tag-china","tag-kenya","tag-william-ruto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20262"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20263,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20262\/revisions\/20263"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}