Kenya plans to promote investments into the leather industry in order to boost local production, officials said on Saturday.

Kenya Leather Development Council (KLDC) CEO Charles Ndung'u told Xinhua in Nairobi that Kenyan-made leather footwear accounts for only 3.3 m pairs of the 42 m pairs bought locally.

"We therefore need more investments in leather sector to ensure we can convert leather into finished goods," Ndung'u said.

"The long term plan is to have all leather produced in Kenya made into finished leather products," he added.

The East African nation has the third largest number of livestock in Africa, thus has abundant raw materials to become a major exporter of finished leather goods,according to Ndung'u.

The CEO said Kenya exported leather products approximately worth 140 million U.S. dollars in 2015 mainly to Asian countries.

"Unfortunately, most of these products were unprocessed or semi-processed goods," he said.

He noted that semi-processed leather is a commodity in the international market and is therefore subject to global price variations.

According to him, in order to cushion the local leather industry from price volatility and increase incomes, Kenya needs to move away from the commodity market to the product market.

Kenya has imposed export tarif on raw hides and skins in order to discourage exports of raw leather.

KLDC said that after the liberalization of the leather industry over two decades ago, the local producers were not able to adjust to the global competition.

According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, Kenya's leather sector accounted for two percent of the country's total formal employment.

Source: Xinhua