KRA Announces Temporary System Disruption for Scheduled Maintenance

Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) has announced that its Integrated Customs Management System (iCMS) will be temporarily shut down to enable it to carry out planned maintenance that will help to enhance the efficiency and performance of the system.

In a notice published on Friday, November 7, KRA announced that the maintenance exercise will be conducted on Sunday, November 9, 2025, between 6:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m.

The three-hour downtime will mean that the iCMS platform will be inaccessible to users.

The Kenya Revenue Authority notifies all the stakeholders that a scheduled maintenance of the iCMS System will be done as follows: START: Sunday, 9th November 2025, 6:00 AM.

The notice included the following: END: Sunday, 9th November 2025, 9.00 AM.

The authority warned that the temporary inaccessibility of the platform could have implications on several services in relation to customs such as cargo clearance, payment of duties, and other import/export operations. The iCMS System will be out of commission at this time.

The notice added that any inconvenience will be most regretfully avoided. The iCMS system is essential in supporting trade in Kenya through the automation of customs activities as well as incorporating all the stakeholders related to trade in one digital platform.

It will allow for faster clearance of goods, achieving transparency, and adhering to customs regulations.

Thus, even brief maintenance periods tend to force traders, logistics, and clearing firms to modify their schedules.

This recent maintenance operation is one of the continuous maintenance operations KRA has done in order to strengthen its digital infrastructure reliability and security.

The authority over the years has focused more on modernization of its systems to support its digital transformation strategy and vision of the government of having a fully automated revenue administration framework. KRA also performed a similar maintenance exercise on its iTax platform in October 2025, which operated for four hours, from Saturday, October 25, at 8:00 p.m. to Sunday, October 26, at 12:00 a.m. At the time, no iTax services were available, such as filing tax returns, processing payments, and providing tax compliance certificates.

KRA has observed that such exercises would be necessary in ensuring the stability of the system and uninterrupted service delivery in the long run.

The announcement of the maintenance also comes at a time when KRA has been recording good revenue collection performance, which has resulted of increased efficiency due to automation of the system.

In September 2025, the authority recorded a history of collecting Ksh85.146 billion in terms of customs revenue- the highest monthly customs revenue in its history.

This was higher than the past record of Ksh82.554 billion recorded in January 2025, which was higher than the monthly target of Ksh3.806 billion.

The figure was a year-on-year growth of 18.8 percent during a period when the previous financial year was in the same month.

The growth in revenue through the years supports the effectiveness of the digital changes at KRA, such as the implementation of iCMS, iTax, and other integrated systems.

It is through maintenance and upgrading of these platforms that the authority will be able to maintain efficiency gains, reduce downtimes, and improve user experiences to all stakeholders involved in the administration of the taxes and the customs services.