The county government has committed herself to help alleviate the living conditions of the traders decentralized into various directorates to enable easy administration and a hands-on approach to problems affecting the traders, cross-border traders included.
The directorates include the Cooperative Enterprise Development Fund (CEDF) whose mandate is to provide affordable loans with low interest to cooperatives in Busia County. These loans support cooperatives to scale up their lending activities, value addition, promote entrepreneurship and enhance production and productivity by attracting and facilitating investments in cooperatives that link to low-income persons, community-based organizations, and women groups.
Using their cross-border trade cooperative group, women can access loans with low interest and boost their businesses. And the County Government is set to establish and sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the Kenya Women Enterprise Fund, which will see women who are cross-border traders able to access and get some funding for their businesses.
The Directorate of Trade, Markets & Industry is charged with formulating and implementing trade policies in the county, collecting revenue in markets, licensing businesses, trade information gathering, dissemination and management, and promoting cross-border trade.
Consumers are also protected against cheating through the false description of goods and services in terms of quantity, quality, price, composition, fitness for purpose, place or date of manufacture or other practices formulating, reviewing and implementing policies and registration of weights and measures.
And then there is the Directorate of Co-operatives. The directorate ensures the following: good cooperative operations, promotion, development and support of cooperative societies, and provision of market information and advisory services.
The regional government has also enacted the Revolving Fund to promote the development of small and micro enterprises and to set up an institutional framework for coordinating loan disbursements and promoting equity and equality in access to trade development services.
In discharging services such as collecting tax from traders, the County Government has been made electronic through a point-of-sale machine to promote accountability and time used in the collection. Information to traders is through various platforms such as official letters, memos, and phone calls, which is considered a more prevalent form of communication.
With the decentralization of activities, the county government is well equipped to aid cross-border traders in carrying out their businesses effectively.
