Kenya recently rolled out the National Illicit Trade Observatory, a tool for monitoring illicit trade in the country, as the country is getting ready for public input on the Intellectual Property Bill 2020.
“There is the Intellectual Property Draft Bill 2020, which proposes a merger of government institutions tasked with promotion and protection of Intellectual Property in the country to form the Intellectual Property Office of Kenya, an umbrella government agency that will deal with registration, custody and enforcement of IP in Kenya,” said Elema Halake, the executive director of the Anti-Counterfeit Authority (ACA), on the World Anti-Counterfeit Day on June 10.
The ACA also released findings of a National Baseline Survey, conducted between October 2019 and February 2020, showing that the building, mining and construction sectors were the hardest hit by counterfeits in the past year, and counterfeiting cost the country over $100 million in revenue.
Of the 16 sectors of the economy covered, building, mining and construction contributed 23.3 per cent in value of total illicit trade, followed by energy, electrical and electronics at 14.67 per cent.
Counterfeiting costs the country more than 32.5 per cent of jobs in the year 2018-2019, while companies recorded sales losses of between 37.6 per cent and 42.1 per cent.
