President William Ruto’s Council of Economic Advisors chairperson David Ndii has said Kenyans only have two choices on the cost of electricity; to bear with the high costs or brace themselves for frequent power outages.
“On power bills, we have two choices. Costly power available 24/7, or cheap power available a few hours a day, like SA. If you cared to peruse our manifesto, you would have noted that cheap power does not feature in our pledges on electricity,” Ndii wrote in a tweet on Thursday, February 23.
Take time to understand what you read. I have said we did not promise “cheap power” Bring down cost here refers of production costs not tariffs. The listed are heavy medium term capital investments that will not bring down tariffs anytime soon. https://t.co/OLu9sKNdS2
— David Ndii (@DavidNdii) February 23, 2023
Moreover, Ndii stated that the Kenya Kwanza government did not promise Kenyans cheap electricity in their pre-election manifesto.
He further noted that the existing power bills are caused by high costs of production, ranging from the fuel used for generation, and water levies.
David Ndii reported that this cost of production is what Kenya Kwanza promised to reduce.
“Take time to understand what you read. I have said we did not promise “cheap power” Bring down cost here refers to production costs not tariffs. The listed are heavy medium term capital investments that will not bring down tariffs anytime soon,” he explained.
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Correct. Thats why our first objective is to turn around Kenya Power. The entire power sector depends on its P&L. A loss making KPLC is the recipe for SA style load shedding. As I said before its either costly power 24/7 or cheap power couple of hours a day https://t.co/gaHxCtu0KT
— David Ndii (@DavidNdii) February 23, 2023
Nonetheless, in the Kenya Kwanza manifesto, electricity was captured under the “Infrastructure” pillar.
“While generation capacity has increased considerably in recent years, our electricity is expensive and unreliable. This ought not to be the case, given that we are blessed with considerable geothermal, solar, wind and water resources that can provide cheap environmentally friendly,” read part of the Kenya Kwanza manifesto.
As such, Kenya Kwanza committed to “turn around Kenya power” by improving reliability and bringing down the cost of electricity through; Accelerating geothermal resources development, mobilizing the resources needed to revamp the transmission and distribution network, enforcing transparency and public accountability in the electricity sector, and developing Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) storage facility in Mombasa.
