President William Ruto has promised to engage fertilizer manufacturers and lower the prices further.
Speaking at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC) on Wednesday, October 5, 2022, he said fertilizer prices would reduce.
President Ruto was at the KICC, where he flagged off Kenyan tea to Accra, Ghana under the Continental Free Trade Area (AFCFTA) guided trade initiative.
Currently, a bag of fertilizer retails at Ksh 3500 for a 50kg bag.
During his inauguration, the President confirmed 1.4 million bags of fertilizers were to be availed to farmers immediately.
“The government of Kenya has already worked on the fertilizer components. I know the government has made available about Ksh3.5 million so that our farmers can have access to fertilizer at a fairly reduced price of Ksh3,500. We are still working with the producers of fertilizer we want to see whether we can take this fertilizer down to between Ksh2,500 and Ksh3,000. That is our trajectory. And it’s not just for tea, it’s for all our farmers whether they are doing coffee or they are doing wheat or maize or all the other cereals in that space,” Ruto said.
Ruto also made it clear that his government will not offer subsidies for consumer goods like maize flour but will only support the production of such crops.
“Our very first intervention is to try and reduce the cost of production so that we can enhance our productivity. Progressively we are going to work with our farmers so that we can better support them in production. I have said we are going to make a conscious decision to support our production and not subsidise our consumption,”
“The Unga subsidy that was done, I was being briefed by the Ministry of Agriculture for one month, the taxpayer was asked to pay Ksh7 billion for the unga that cost Ksh100 which was nowhere in the first place. Only few people laid hold of it. If we had spent Sh7 billion shillings in fertilizer it would have been a different ball game.” The president added.
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