What Is Ruto’s Plan To Reduce Cost Of Living, After Outgoing Gov’t Spent Sh144 Billion In Fuel Subsidies, Sh7 Billion In 1 Month On Unga Subsidy?

NAIROBI, Kenya, Sept, 14 – The Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Epra) is Wednesday expected to announce the new fuel prices for the next month as Kenyans brace themselves for a possible rise in the cost of living in the country.

During his inauguration speech, President William Ruto addressed the rising cost of living saying that it had become a source of fear and anxiety amongst Kenyans nationwide.

“Our people are confronted daily with increasingly unaffordable prices, especially food and transport. In our economic forums across the country during the campaign, citizens consistently shared their anxiety, pain, and fury on this matter. It calls for an urgent and decisive resolution,” he said.

Ruto said that challenges revolving around the cost of living were related to production in the country while saying that his government’s priority would be to bring down the cost of living by first empowering producers. 

“The forecast for maize harvest this year is below 30 million bags against the normal production of 40 million bags. The main cause of the decline in production is the high cost of inputs,” he said.

The outgoing administration is said to have on fuel subsidy alone, spent taxpayers’ money have spent amounting to Sh144 billion, with a whooping Sh60 billion being spent in the last 4 months.

“If the subsidy continues to the end of the financial year, it will cost the taxpayer Ksh 280 billion, equivalent to the entire national government development budget,” said the president.

Additionally, there was an attempt to subsidize Unga in the run-up to the election, a program that gobbled up Sh7 billion in one month, with no impact, according to Ruto.

“In addition to being very costly, consumption subsidy interventions are prone to abuse, they distort markets and create uncertainty, including artificial shortages of the very products being subsidized,”

Ruto’s government now intends to make fertilizer, good-quality seeds, and other agricultural inputs affordable and available.

The government has since made arrangements to make 1.4 million bags of fertilizer available at Sh3,500 for a 50kg bag down from the current Sh6,500.

“This will be available from next week. I appeal to county governments in Eastern, Central, and Western regions, to work with us in making sure that the fertilizer is available to farmers. Additionally, to cushion tea farmers, we have made arrangements with KTDA to immediately supply tea farmers with fertilizer at Sh3,500 down from Sh6,500. This is our initial intervention, we will be doing more for the medium term and the long term,”

Amid the biting drought that has since affected four million Kenyans, the government is set to take further measures to assist affected communities.