Export subsidies and trade policy: The experience of Kenya

This paper finds that manufacturing firms in Kenya have responded poorly to the availability of export subsidies. It is argued that this has resulted from the delays and uncertainty surrounding disbursement procedures, and from the limited extent to which the subsidy lessened the anti-export bias of a policy structure which has emphasized import substitution. It is further argued that a budgetary constraint makes it impossible to offset the anti-export bias with export subsidies at existing levels of domestic market protection, and that what is required is the lowering and standardization of domestic market protection levels, which can be most appropriately achieved through a combination of devaluation and trade tax/subsidy changes.