Okay. Hey, sorry. Okay. Fine. Better. Okay. Yeah, I have it here. Sorry for that. I'm really having a problem trying to connect. I don't know what is the cause of this technical glitch. As I said, the last part would be if you're stuck and you need to speak to somebody and how else you can at least get to know the status of your file. The last part will be the questions and answer sessions. Okay? We go to the next slide, Stefan. The Kenya Bureau of Standards is a legal entity that exists in Kenya. It's formed under the statutory body of the government and is governed by the Standards Act, Chapter 496 of the laws of the Republic of Kenya. Other than ensuring quality of goods that are imported into the country, the Bureau is also responsible to ensuring that goods which are manufactured in the country are complying with the applicable, standards as well as the technical regulations, as well as ensuring matters that relates to metrology, and also certification. They have been implementing the PVoC program since the year 2005 in the month of October. The basis of the main objective of KEBS implementing the export verification of conformity to standards was to ensure that goods which are imported into Kenya meet the requirements of the applicable standards as well as the technical regulations. In addition to that, the program is to ensure that goods which are coming into the country are safe for consumers' use and thereby deter importation of substandard goods. Any substandard product which are found in the market or are found during the clearance process at the entry point may be shipped back to the country of supply at the expense of the importer or even be destroyed again at the expense of the importer. Now, this PVOC program is enshrined in the Standards Act, Chapter 496 of the laws of Kenya. Therefore, KEBS has full mandate and full responsibility to ensure and to implement the program. We have quite a number of regulatory authorities in Kenya. Irrespective of the regulatory affairs that they run, when it come to matters quality, they still have to ensure they liaise with KEBS and ensure that goods still comply with applicable standard. I'll give a typical example. Somebody is bringing in, say, medicine. Medicine falls under Pharmacy and Poisons Board, which is a different regulatory authority, but still the medicines have to comply with applicable standard in Kenya. The Kenyan contract, the PVOC contract, normally is awarded to inspection companies through a very competitive international bidding process, and each mandate runs for 3 years. That's around 36 months. For SGS, we've been very, very competitive, and our expertise speak for it, that this is the sixth consecutive term that SGS is providing the PVOC services for Kenya Bureau of Standards. At the end of the interventions or the end main output of the pre-export verification of conformity to standard services, we issue what is called certificate of conformity to evidence that goods have been verified and found to meet the requirements of the applicable Kenyan standards or applicable standards and the technical regulations. If goods are found not to comply, then a non-conformity report is issued. Now, shipments which are arriving in Kenya without a Certificate of Conformity, and particularly shipments coming from countries which are under PVoC program, they will be subjected to a penalty or a fee payable to KEBS, which is 5% of customs value. Okay. Can we move to the next slide? Now, as we talk about the countries under PVoC program, in the current mandate, we have zones listed from zone one, I think, up to 18, but number 17 was missed. So we still maintain what the legal procurement entity in Kenya provided. So 17 is missing. So the other zones, UK, which was under zone one, actually is now back to Kenya Bureau of Standards under destination inspection. The rest of the zones 2-6 this would fall under China. There are inspection companies in China which were awarded the contract. SGS provides the PVOC services for zone 7-18, excluding 17, which was omitted. These are the countries where we are mandated by Kenya Bureau of Standards to provide the PVOC services. Now, any shipments coming from countries outside of these will be subjected to destination inspection by Kenya Bureau of Standards and at the normal fee of 0.6%. Of course, goods will not be cleared until testing is completed and the test results are verified to ascertain compliance to the requirements of the standard. Okay. That's my glimpse on the PVOC Kenya program. We go to the procedures. In the PVoC program, we have three certification routes. Before, for those who are familiar with the PVoC program, before this new contract, we had almost four, I would call them even five, quite a long list there of certification routes. We had route N, then route A1, route B, route C, and then we had route D. KEBS excluded route A1. They also removed route D. Route A1 was actually for small scale shipments, small value shipments, and route D was specifically for consolidators. Currently we have only three certification routes. Route A is applicable to any trader, any shipment or any product. This route requires that for each and every shipment, products have to be inspected and tested. If test reports are not provided, then we as SGS, we need to draw the samples during inspection, and those samples need to be submitted to any of the recognized laboratories that we are going to discuss in the next slides to be tested according to the requirements of the applicable standard. That's very, very important. Before we would wait till tests have to be done, get test reports, we evaluate, and then we proceed into inspection. Now KEBS demand and instruct that as soon as we receive the duly filled request for certificate, we receive the invoice, be it a pro forma or a commercial. We've received the IDF and the UCR number. We've received the payment. Okay. The confirmation of availability of goods, we are supposed to conduct the inspections within the 4 working days. Meaning, if there are no test reports provided or acceptable certification documentations provided that we may use to ascertain conformity of the products and the shipment applicable standard. Okay? We need to proceed and conduct the inspection. The rest of the intervention processes, that is testing or verification of conformity documents or verification of test reports would come after. So this is a very key change in the processes. Very, very important. That's why it's very important that we know what we may need to do before we can submit the request for certificate. So these are the key changes in Route A. Okay? I repeat, in Route A, we'd verify the test reports or the certification documentations only once the certification documentations or the test reports are validated and considered acceptable, then we would proceed with our inspection. Now KEBS says may proceed with the inspections, 1, RFC is received, 2, invoice or pro forma or commercial is received. IDF and UCR is received. Payment for that inspection is received or confirmed, or for those who have credit agreements with SGS, that part is covered. The availability of goods, of product is confirmed. Then our inspector need to do inspection within 4 working days. Where testing or test report is not provided, then samples need to be drawn by our inspectors during the inspection process. The samples to be submitted to any of the recognized laboratories for tests to be done. Those are the key changes in route A. In route B, go to the next slide. Route B. Route B is specifically applicable to products that are shipped in homogeneous manner. Shipments are very frequent, and there's a proof that there's consistency in compliance. I'm talking about this because I want to believe we are familiar with the certification route, so that's I'm going, specifically or straightforward to the key changes. KEBS new procedure requires that a new applicant, what I mean by a new applicant, this is somebody who's never shipped their goods to Kenya. Okay? They've never shipped their goods to Kenya at all. If a new applicant, they need to at least subject their shipment to route A and cover or have at least two consignments certified under route A. Okay? The test reports which are used for certifying consignments under Route A, basically the test reports used or the conformity documents used in issuing CoCs in Route A, would form the basis for processing the product registration. Very important, applicant must have valid quality management system certificate in place. Without quality management system certificate in place, then registration process might not be provided. The statement of registration, which is normally issued, that is for product registration, has a validity period of one year. Now, the mandatory certification of consignments under Route A and the use of subsequent test reports from the two CoCs under Route A is only applicable to new applicants. For renewal, the applicant will just need to submit recent test report for renewal process. No need to go back to Route A because there's already proof of compliance to the program. The registration has been there for those number of years, or there has been, I mean, monitoring, which you see here in the previous statement of registration. We go straight to renewal, but we'll need the most recent certificate or test report, certificates of analysis or applicable conformity documentations. A very key revision done by KEBS is under monitoring for our to-be client. KEBS requires that during the validity period of the registration, we should ensure that 30% of registered consignments are inspected, just the normal inspection. However, when it's time to do the inspection, then the exporter is required to submit test report traceable to the consignment to be inspected or the consignment inspected. When we are doing monitoring, we conduct the inspection, but before we go for inspection, the exporter must submit test report traceable to the consignment. The test report for monitoring need not to be 100% compliant to the requirements of the applicable standard. There could be certain key elements or key parameters of your product that you verify. After every production, you verify to ascertain that the output still meet requirements of the standard. Such internal test report is what we are requesting for. Okay? Such internal test report is what we are requesting for. I've just heard a loud something. I don't know what has exploded just near my office. Okay. Route C is applicable only to manufacturers, and the manufacturers must have valid quality management system certificates in place. It involves the factory audit or the applicant may share the last factory inspection report submitted with necessary certification, documentation, certificates of analysis, test report, technical specification, in-house test report, and the like. A license is issued. The license is valid for three years. During the validity period of the license, KEBS requires that we conduct surveillance inspection, and the surveillance inspection need to be done at least once a year or cover at least 10% of the total shipment certified during the validity period of the license. At the time of inspection, the manufacturer must submit test report traceable to the shipment inspected. Without that, we are not able to proceed with the certification process. Okay. Next slide is on the products which are not eligible for registration. According to instructions from KEBS, these are the items or the products which are not eligible for registration. These have to go through Route A, where testing or submission of conformity documents have to be done per shipment. For bulk shipments, it's mandatory that our inspectors have to sample, and samples have to submitted in SGS laboratories for testing. Bulk shipment of petroleum products, bulk shipments of cereals, edible oils, fertilizers, these ones the sampling have to be done by SGS inspectors as well as sampling of shipments of sugar. Okay. I mean, for certification of used clothes, for those who are dealing in used clothes, still the factory audit, rather the baling site audit is still a requirement before inspection can be done. Okay. The next slide is about the recognized laboratories. If you may recall, this year and even at the beginning of this current contract, which started on the 23rd of June, KEBS were very, very strict, and they demanded that test reports have to be from any of these recognized laboratories. The test report from SGS laboratory or third-party laboratory accredited to ISO 17025 or a government-owned laboratory. Well, a government-owned laboratory, the qualifying for such laboratory is just documentation to ascertain that the laboratory is owned by the government. Okay? This is what KEBS provided, and tests have to be done according to the requirements of the applicable standard, and they will not accept any other test report. It was a bit difficult. With the feedback to KEBS, they came back with a revision of what is considered as the recognized test report that we'll discuss in the next slide. SGS, first in the list of recognized laboratories are SGS laboratories. KEBS require that we as the inspection company, given this mandate to conduct PVoC program, to ensure that tests are done in our laboratories, because anyway, that was one of the qualifying criteria for us to be awarded the contract. SGS has a network of laboratories. There are over 2,700 laboratories and offices around the world. All SGS laboratories are accredited to ISO/IEC 17025, and they have a very wide scope of testing. Well, somebody would say or ask, but sometimes we have certain tests that SGS cannot do. Well, it is very much possible, but SGS laboratory might not be able to conduct certain tests which are in applicable Kenyan standard. The reason being, as we all may appreciate, is that for one to invest in a laboratory, get the equipment, the reagents, the personnel, the analysts, would depend on the frequency for such tests to be done. Certain parameters are really unique to Kenyan standards, and they are not global. It's not unique. Even KEBS themselves, they might not have capability to test each and every parameter in the standard. That's why, again, KEBS gave certain leeway on how to deal in such scenario where a test parameter cannot be tested in any laboratory, not in SGS laboratory and not in any of the laboratory that I mentioned, a third party accredited laboratory, ISO/IEC 17025 or a government-owned laboratory. Okay? Our laboratories services, the team is on standby, very much ready to help to ensure that they identify the labs, okay? The labs, SGS labs with the capability to test your product and also to talk to the lab to ensure they prioritize on the samples, basically for shipments coming to Kenya to ensure that the turnaround time is met without any delays. It's very important that priority and for faster resolution and for faster services, quicker turnaround time, you have your product tested in SGS laboratories. Okay? As is, remember in the previous slide, we talked about the recognized laboratories which are very difficult for compliance purposes, and because not every product that there are in this world need to be tested in an accredited laboratory. With this in mind, KEBS came back to us with what they called recognized test report, and they tried to break the product into five categories, the consumer products, machinery and spares, medical equipment, automotive part and spares, then chemical and raw materials without applicable Kenyan standards. For consumer products, KEBS advises that priority, first and foremost, is that tests have to be done in any of the recognized laboratory. Only in the absence of such recognized laboratories in your countries would we, as inspection companies, arrange for witness testing in the manufacturer's laboratory.J Again, that will depend whether the manufacturer has a laboratory in place, they have laboratory equipment calibrated, and the analyst is able to conduct the tests. Okay? If there isn't any capability whatsoever, then such communication should be shared with, of course, your SGS office at your country, who will then let us know as the contract management office to inform KEBS of the challenges we are having. For machinery and spares, this was really good. It was a very good kind of flexibility on KEBS' side, 'cause ideally to have machinery tested in an accredited laboratory was not going to work. KEBS have agreed that we may use the manufacturer's internal test report, but the manufacturer must have valid ISO 9001 certificate in place or any other quality management systems in place. This has to be evidenced. We have that. That will be very, very helpful. We use that for certification. For medical equipment, the feedback that KEBS received from Pharmacy and Poisons Board is that medical equipment importers must obtain the permit. To proceed with the certification of medical equipment, the manufacturer is required, is expected to submit their test report, the manufacturer's test report, the permit issued by Pharmacy and Poisons Board, and the manufacturer must have a valid ISO 13485 certificate in place. Very important, all these test reports must be traceable to the shipment. For automotive parts and spares, again, here KEBS are very flexible. They've considered acceptance of manufacturer's internal test report or in-house test report, and the manufacturer must be having IATF 16949 certificate in place. Now, these requirements actually were supported. These were supported by the industry, who also echoed our suggestion to KEBS, as we had received feedback from the industry globally. For chemicals and raw materials, specifically without applicable Kenyan standards, then the manufacturer's internal test report may be considered. The manufacturer must have a valid ISO 9001 certificate. You see from the machinery, medical device, automotive parts to chemicals without Kenyan standards, it's more of, you know, we consider the internal or manufacturer's internal test report and then with the ISO certificates for chemicals and raw materials as well as machinery and parts. For medical devices and automotive parts and spares, we would receive, we would need the certificate, a valid one, of course, of ISO 13485 and IATF 16949. That is for medical devices and automotive parts and accessories, respectively. This is a very good change in the process. It's, it's more flexible. It's something that I believe should facilitate the conformity assessment. Next slide is on what can you do before you submit your request for certificate. It's very important that one gets to understand what are the applicable standards for the product. What are the parameters that need to be tested, such that if possible, you can already arrange for testing of the products in any of the recognized laboratories in case of consumer products. In case of manufacturer or the manufacturer, where manufacturer's internal test report will be considered, then also you need to get to know the parameters so that you can arrange the tests or the testing way in advance before you even request for certificate. Similarly, if you request to know, you get to know the requirements of your product in terms of the standard, you'll be able to know what are the requirements with respect to marking and labeling, as well as the requirements with respect to shelf life. Because we've had instances where the pre-shipment tests are done, inspection is about to be done, then we realize that the product shelf life is not meeting the set requirements or the regulations of Kenya. For food, KEBS requires that, not even KEBS, but the regulation requires that food must have at least 75% shelf life upon arrival in the country, and for non-food items must have at least 50% shelf life remaining upon arrival in Kenya. This is very important. If these are prepared way in advance, it would help a great deal. We have instances where shipment cannot proceed simply because the labels are lacking brand name. For Kenya now, brand name is a mandatory requirement. No product can enter the market or enter Kenya or be cleared without a brand name. Now, KEBS is reinforcing this requirement, but it's also under the responsibility of Anti-Counterfeit Authority of Kenya. They can block the shipment. It will not be cleared simply because there's no brand name. It will be difficult to verify that it's not a counterfeit if it doesn't have a brand name. We've had instances where certain shipments were blocked for a long time, some even shipped back because there was no brand name, yet quality and everything else was in order. Critically, it's the country of origin. Sometimes we've seen shipments which do not, or consignment or products with no country of origin. It's a very, very important part. It's very important to know all these requirements before, way before when you say, "Fine, now I'm settling on my sales agreement," or, "My order is okay," or, "I'm submitting request for certificate, I'm ready for inspection." For us, you give us the RFC or all the documents that I mentioned in the previous slide, we'll receive payment, we'll do the inspection. Look, you'll get stuck. You'll get stuck because you'll not be able to ship unless you undertake corrective action. You can do this way in advance. It's very important always to, when you do this, it will be evidence that you are maintaining compliance to the requirements of the standard. If your products are eligible for registration Route B and Route C, please have them registered. It will help in ascertaining and reducing the turnaround time and also will reduce the cost of testing. For example, consumer products where you need to do tests per consignment, and the test reports or certificates of analysis must be traceable to the shipment. The cost aspect of it, testing per consignment, if you're having frequent shipment, well, it would not be good for certifying this under Route A. Route B and Route C, please, I say, if you're a manufacturer, your goods are eligible for Route C. It's not among the list which are not eligible, then have this license. For Route B, this is for any trader with frequent shipment, homogeneous product. Another thing is very important, prepare your containers way in advance in case of those dealing in used clothing, and for shipments coming from Dubai under Route A, where sealing is mandatory. If you ask for inspection, we come for inspection, containers are not available. It means we'll not be able to supervise the loading, we'll not be able to seal, and therefore it will require a revisit, and a revisit has cost implication. We, of course, will have to bill for a re-inspection. It's very important that you look at this information, prepare yourself before you submit your request for certificate. Okay, next slide is basically on the verification fee. These are the verification fee, which mandated to us by Kenya Bureau of Standards. Actually, we cannot charge above or below the fee structure. However, the ad valorem fees, okay, are exclusive of laboratory testing, licensing, registration, sampling of bulk shipment, audit of baling site in case of used clothes or in cases of re-inspection or aborted inspection. We have to come back to the inspection. Such fees will be quoted on a case-by-case basis. I'm almost done. The next slide, Stephanie, share with me, is when you need to get information. You wanna ship to Kenya. You've been shipping to Kenya, but there are certain things which are not clear to you. SGS has offices, I would say, in almost all the countries, because until this current contract, SGS was providing pre-export services in all the countries in the world. I can't remember any country where SGS was not able to provide services. The contract, the way it was designed, we qualified to provide the services globally until now that KEBS came up with certain restrictions according to, you know, the way they want. We have global representation, and our staff are readily available to assist you. Should you send a query, say, for example, you are in UK, but your shipments are going to come from Germany, and you don't know whom to speak to in Germany, or the exporter in Germany doesn't know who to speak to in Germany, but you're sitting in the UK. Still, when you speak to our colleagues in UK, they will link you up or they'll link your exporter to our contact offices in Germany. We provide account management facilities specifically for frequent exporters as well as the importers, so that you don't need to, you know, talk to somebody, Mary today, I talked to John the other day. No. We have the key account managers, so that they can coordinate certification of your consignment irrespective of the country, so long as the country is under PVoC program. Even if it's not under previous year program, we'll still give you. The contract management office here also readily available. We'll link you up with our affiliates, where your goods will be shipped from. Easily, we provide you the necessary information where necessary, or you want a clarification from KEBS would be readily available and always readily available to provide the information. We try as much as we can as a service entity to readily avail the information to our clients. Sometimes we go out of our way to seek certain information which are not within the previous year mandate. But for us, it's important because we need to facilitate our importers with the information that helps them to make an informed decision with respect to imports into Kenya under the previous year program or not. We have the online tracking services that you can use to track the status of your file. You can know when the inspection has been done, and it does also give a summary what is pending. When we talk about the online services, for those who already use our services or our system, we have the Exporter Portal. We discourage use of the manual filling of request for certification, something that was there before. We've moved from the manual aspect to processing the request or just filling the request online. Once you submit, it's automatically received in our application that we use for processing the file. We have high experience and very competent and I call ourselves very friendly staff because our staff weren't friendly, we would not be providing information which are even out of the previous year program. We have the use of Exporter Portal. Any of the parties, be it an importer or an exporter or even the clearing agent, they can submit the request for certificate. This is what I had for us today. I tried to capture a few. I may not have captured everything or provided all the information on what you needed to hear, but I think with that, give it back to Steph, we can now go to maybe questions. Okay. Let me see. Okay. I'm seeing a question here. I'll start from the first one. Okay. I'm seeing there's a concern from Dan. We have a question from Spencer. Confirm you do not do pre-shipment inspection from UK anymore. That is very true. If not, please suggest a service that does. Okay. Spencer, it's true, we do not provide PVOC services in UK. However, I might want to suggest something here that you may look into. There's no inspection company that is providing PVOC in UK at all. Shipments coming from UK will be subjected to destination inspection by KEBS. However, sometimes I feel that it's not safe to ship goods blindly without at least having an idea whether they meet the requirements of the applicable standard or not. We may help you to arrange for testing, and also the SGS office can help you verify labeling, marking, and packaging of your products. If your products have limited shelf life, we may also verify that for you. This is out of PVoC program, and it will be charged according to the rate that SGS will determine. When the shipments arrive here, at least you have confidence that your shipments have been verified and they're meeting requirements. When we give such kind of services out of the normal PVoC, which is just a private arrangement, we issue what is called Certificate of Inspection. We just give a report of our findings during the inspection process, and then we attach the test report or certificate of analysis. Okay. The next question is from Massimo. Can you reconfirm that in case of test report required, you can still schedule the physical inspection to speed up the process, especially for Route A? Correct, Massimo. Yes. We can arrange, conduct the inspection, but you'll not be able to ship. You'll not be able to ship until we have reviewed the test report and it's confirmed that your products are meeting the requirements of the standard. Okay? We are required to do the inspection for Route A within the 4 working days upon receipt of the document that I mentioned, the IDF, RFC, invoice, payment, and confirmation availability of goods. Simon, why do we need to do a laboratory test for standard food K-bag produced by a company which is IFS and BRC certified? I think I did see this, Simon. I received this one, and a product has, it has a Kenyan standard or something. I know I had received this query, and it has a standard. I think it's a regulation. It's a regulation, and that's why it need to be tested. So if there's none of the recognized laboratory can conduct the test, then we may consider test witnessing. However, if it's different and maybe the information I've received on this K-bag is not adequate, perhaps you can take my email address, which I believe Stephanie is projecting now. You drop me a mail, and let me dig into it, interrogate the file, and then I'll advise you accordingly. Sena Terrasa. No, goods from China are subject to PVoC program, but SGS is not providing PVoC services in China. China was subdivided into a number of zones. They put certain provinces in number of zones. For you to know which zone belongs to which inspection company, well, the other option is if you visit KEBS website, you might see the subdivision or the zones in China. If not, please drop us a mail, and we'll send you the zonal, as done by Kenya Bureau of Standards, and that would guide you. But we do not provide PVoC services in China, but China has PVoC program going on. For Nguyen, we are from Vietnam. We are a group A. Our product is plywood. We have been working with SGS Vietnam than a group of SGS as advisors. The testing items, but some items could not be tested in Vietnam labs. Kindly please help to advise the solution. Kindly drop me a mail so that I can review the case and know what we can do. First, the first priority is evaluate if you can conduct tests in your laboratory. If you can conduct the test, then our offices in Vietnam will do witness testing. Okay? They will witness the testing process and the results that they will issue will be considered for processing your certificate. Okay. Stephanie, are we still within reasonable time? Unless you type, I might not be able to see. Okay. Okay. Another question is from Lucas. There are template for the manufacturer test report. What information should be included here? Does it need to be signed? No, there's no template for manufacturer test report because if a manufacturer having a quality management system in place, they must be having their own template for their test report. It cannot be a standardized kind of report. That's why we are saying the manufacturer would give us their in-house test report, and we are not dictating the template. However, the parameters of the standard must be captured in that report, meaning the parameters of the applicable standard must be tested, okay? If it's a full standard. If not, then the specific parameter that is being tested has to be indicated in the report. For you, Katri, I think I responded to that. Chino, Route B, can we use the test report which we submit to Route A from SGS laboratory, or we need to get test report again for Route B? No, if test already done and COC issued under Route A, if you're a new applicant, at least we'll need two COCs under Route A. The very test reports which were used to certify consignment under Route A should be used for registration purposes. No need to do specific tests. Okay. I think we've really gone above the set timelines, Stephanie. If it's okay, we'll with the rest of the questions, we will address them and send them to you through the email. Back to you, Stephanie. Because I can't hear you, I think that's it from my side.