The Politics of Importing Consumables

Ever wonder what it takes to  import consumables.i.e drinks, processed foods etc.in to the country ? will i found it out and i want to share it with you. You might want to do you own back ground check as this might not be enough.

The product  you are importing will need to be declared as safe for consumption and to do that you will have to go to the Food and Drugs Board. You need to get a certificate of analysis from the Food and Drug Board (FDB)  and for that to  be issued you would be given a parameters form to send to the Testing department of the Standards Board.

This parameters states what Food and Drugs Board looks out for in every product before it can grant approval for use  You might want to carry a lot of the product as sample for testing, this is where it becomes tricky. One of the testing officer i met there told me, you need an average of four boxes if the product is in sachet form.This could go up if the sachet is less than 50grams.Why the need for that much, i have no idea.

When testing is done, it is then sent back to the FDB and if it meets the all the requirement, a  certificate of approval is granted, but don't trust Standard board sending the report on your behave, go for it and send it to FDB yourself (why ? because no body cares about you, they get paid for being at post and not always doing the things that needs to be down. in short it Gov't agency). It may sound easy but trust me, it can be very frustrating but by reading this, you've done half of that job already. (you wish).

Should it be that the Standard board will send the report on your behave, please make sure you get the phone number of whomever you gave the parameter forms to and if possible please find out who will be working on your product or a contact of one of the testing officers, that way you can be call in to find out when the analysis will be or is done and if the report has been sent to FDB.

You can also request the certificate of analysis from the producer/manufacturers of the product,  if they have the same system for measuring the parameters, then you are good to go and you don't have to deal with Standards Board

Remember, without the FDB's approval you can't get your product out of the ports.

You will also need to register the company before you get approval from the FDB. It does not matter what type of business you are operating .i.e Sole Proprietorship, Partnership, Limited liability etc. If you have sole right of distributorship you can register using the name of the product. .i.e Herbalife [country], Samsung [country] etc but in my view, it is not a wise thing to do, specially when you are not the manufacturer.

If you get to the testing department of the Standards Boards, ask for a young lady called Adobea, she is  great at what she does, very nice looking and polite too. that is one thing you don't get from most civil servants. She will answer all your challenging questions.She was very helpful and gave me a lot of info but can't recall all because my attention was on admiring rather than listening. lol

I think we all must look to exporting rather than importing. There is so much unhealthy and sub-standards product on our market and because of their low price tag are putting the local quality product out of market. Having said that, I also believe that the local manufacturers/producers should be a bit more creative and cut down their cost of production by reducing their spending/expenses, this will help bring down prices hence put them on a competitive edge with other imported products.