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Kenya: Kenya Gazette Highlights 5 September 2008 |
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Monday, 08 September 2008 |
Written Submissions to Replace Oral Arguments in Court, Sugar Safeguard Committee Established, Carbacid (CO2) Kenya Ltd Applies for License to Prospect for Carbon Dioxide
Written Submissions to Replace Oral Arguments in Court
In the latest Kenya Gazette, Chief Justice Evans Gicheru has for the first time-invoked powers conferred on him by the Judicature Act and made directions following advice from the recently formed Expeditious Disposal of Cases Committee. This committee was created by Justice Gicheru in 2007 to assist in the fast disposal of cases in the clogged justice system of Kenya. This is the first time that the Chief Justice is acting on recommendations from the Committee.
Turning away from the long held tradition of the Kenyan court system a carryover from the colonial era that calls for legal arguments to be presented both orally and in written submissions, the Chief Justice has called for “all courts to be encouraged to permit the filing and exchange by the parties of written submissions to supplement or replace oral arguments”.
For a country whose judges still record oral testimony by writing down the arguments made by the parties to a dispute, the order by the Chief Justice to do away with the old tradition of oral arguments and substituting them with written arguments instead will create more time to hear more cases and so ensure the faster disposal of disputes in courts. This will come as a relief to many businesses in Kenya.
According to the 2008 World Bank doing business index, Kenya was ranked the 72nd easiest country to do business in out of 178 economies surveyed by the World Bank. In 2007, the country was ranked 82th. However, on the ease of enforcing contracts, which is the responsibility of the court system, the country ranked a miserable 107, a clear indication that commercial justice in Kenya is severely lacking.
The Chief Justice has also ordered that adjournment of cases be avoided as far as possible, to ensure that the cases are disposed of fast. However, this is not the first time that the Chief Justice has asked courts not to adjourn cases unnecessarily. Speaking to this writer earlier, the Minister of Justice and National Cohesion, Ms Martha Karua, said that the order not to adjourn cases unnecessarily is observed more in breach than in compliance.
Sugar Safeguard Committee Established
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade Uhuru Kenyatta has established the Sugar Safeguard Committee that shall “facilitate and monitor the implementation of the sugar safeguard arrangements”. The sugar safeguard arrangements were agreed upon following a decision made by the Council of Ministers of the Common Market for East and Central Africa (COMESA).
The main issues for the committee will be building stakeholder consensus on the various aspects of the sugar imports within the COMESA region and safeguard arrangements to reduce stakeholder discord. The committee will also administer and monitor the implementation of the sugar safeguard and all the undertakings on which the extension of the safeguard is premised, while also ensuring the implementation of appropriate government policies and legislation relating to the sugar industry.Furthermore, it will monitor the implementation of the sugar industries strategic plan, and in this respect ensure the alignment of the individual factory strategic plans to the overall industry strategic plan.
The Committee will also submit quarterly reports to the COMESA Secretariat on progress achieved in the implementation of the sugar safeguards and facilitate interventions as appropriate in respect to policy reforms and evaluation mission of the sugar industry. The specific purpose of these missions will be to assess the progress achieved in the sugar industry restructuring process as reflected in its quarterly reports and interviewing the prevailing challenges with a view to developing responsive strategies in liaison with the sugar safeguard committee.
The Committee formed by the trade minister will include officials from the Ministry of Finance and Agriculture, the Kenya Bureau of Standards, the Kenya Sugar Millers Association, the Kenya National Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Kenya Revenue Authority, the Kenya Sugar Board, the Kenya Association of Manufactures and the Ministry of Industrialization. The Minister formed the committee on 14 August 2008 and with its gazettement, the committee now legally comes into force.
COMESA has allowed Kenya to limit sugar imports until 2012 to provide its local sugar industry sufficient time for reform measures to become more competitive, but is now concerned that Kenya will introduce additional protective measures.
Carbacid (CO2) Kenya Ltd Applies for License to Prospect for Carbon Dioxide
Carbacid (CO2) Kenya Limited, a subsidiary of Carbacid Investments, has made an application for a special license to prospect for carbon dioxide over an area of approximately 28,000 square meters in Uasin Gishu District in Rift Valley Province.
Parent company Nairobi-based Carbacid Investments is a carbon dioxide company listed on the Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE). Currently under a takeover attempt by BOC Kenya, the shares of the company have been suspended at the NSE due to the takeover attempt. However, legal wrangles between the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) and BOC led to the takeover stalling for over two years.
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