President William Ruto Pledges On Infrastructure

• Promises Made - Kenya President
• 2 Years, 9 Months ago
• 409

President William Ruto Pledges On Infrastructure

Water

Water is a constitutional right (Article 43), and the most important enabler of agriculture. Two-thirds of Kenya’s agricultural land requires irrigation, against only 4 per cent that is irrigated. Irrigation is the single most important game changer in agriculture. Current policy is centered on domestic use and large dams.

The key issue is financing value for money. Kenya Kwanza Commitment Kenya Kwanza is convinced that universal access to safe water can be achieved by 2027.

This will be done by:

• Shifting focus from large dams to household/community water projects, with emphasis on harvesting and recycling;
• Where large reservoirs are viable, adopt PPP model (using IPP model);
• Using modern technologies on desalination, develop Turkana aquifers using PPP model (potential to irrigate a million acres of land);
• Deploy climate smart agriculture technologies (micro-irrigation, precision irrigation, hydro and aquaponic technologies)

Roads Roads are arguably our country’s most important infrastructure.The Government has pursued an ambitious road building programme that has doubled our paved roads. This has been achieved by adopting the Low Volume Sealed Roads (LVSR) programme resulting in 6000km completed with another 3800km under construction. Hitherto all paved roads were built to the standard irrespective of volume of traffic. The adoption of the LVSR standard has reduced cost of paving low traffic roads substantially. Be that as it may, the need for roads remains immense.

One third of the country’s 63,575km of classified roads is in need of rehabilitation or reconstruction. It is readily apparent that the financial constraints we face require very prudent use of resources. Kenya Kwanza commitment

• Complete all roads under construction;
• Prioritise upgrading and maintenance of rural access roads as well as the improvement of roads infrastructure in urban informal settlement and critical national and regional trunk roads that have the highest immediate economic impact.

Electricity

Electricity is a vital economic and social service critical to production, essential services such as health and security and quality of life of citizens. 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 power.

One of the key contributors to both the cost and quality of power is the aging transmission and distribution network. The investment required to upgrade the network is considerable, more so in the difficult financial situation the country is in, but it is imperative. Cheap clean power can be a strong value proposition for attracting energy-intensive production for the global market in Kenya.

The current administration set out an ambitious electrification programme that aimed to achieve universal access to electricity in the shortest time possible. Much progress has been made with total electricity connections increasing from 3 million to over 8 million today. This rapid pace of connectivity was achieved primarily by changing the business model of KPLC, which hitherto required new customers to pay a hefty deposit that many people could not afford.

As a result, many transformers had a lot of excess capacity. The Last Mile Connectivity programme changed this to connecting people first and recovering the connection charges from the customer’s monthly bills. The connectivity drive has come with some challenges. Consumption has not risen as expected, while the operational costs have increased, and this has affected Kenya Power’s financial performance.

Partly as a result of these challenges, Kenya Power’s responsiveness to consumers has deteriorated. This is against the backdrop of a disruptive technology landscape that portends transformation of the electricity industry perhaps on the same scale as the mobile phone revolution has disrupted fixed line telephony. This includes rapidly declining costs of renewable power which, as noted, Kenya has in plenty.

The cost of utility scale power storage is also declining sharply, which is helping to overcome the limitations of intermittence of solar and wind power. On the consumer side, stand-alone solar power and micro-grids are increasingly cost-effective alternatives to grid power for domestic and even commercial consumers.

Transportation is going to be a big consumer of electricity as electric vehicles replace fossil fuel ones. Kenya Kwanza Commitment Turn around Kenya Power. We will delink Government development initiatives, leaving Kenya Power to operate on commercial principles.

A policy, regulatory and financing framework for off-grid community-owned development projects (mini and micro-grids) will be instituted. Improve reliability, bring down the cost of electricity.

We propose a three-point plan to bring down the cost of power namely;

• Mobilise the resources needed to revamp the transmission and distribution network;
• Accelerate geothermal resources development;
• Develop Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) storage facility in Mombasa, with a view to phasing out heavy fuel oil (HFO) from the power generation portfolio. This will also contribute to meeting Kenya’s emission reduction commitments;
• Enforce transparency and public accountability of the electricity sector. Require the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) to publish quarterly system, financial and operational performance reports.

Strengthen Consumer Protection.

The ERC has the mandate to deal with consumer protection issues, but the resort to litigation in the courts and protests (such as the #SwitchOffKPLC campaign) suggest that this is not working as well as it should. Inadequate consumer protection is a cross-cutting issue. The mobile phone industry also has its fair share of consumer protection issues. Predatory lending by the “fintech” industry, which strangles telecoms and finance, is another case. It does seem to be the case in general that, when regulatory functions are bundled together, consumer protection gets the short shrift. Consideration will be given to the establishment of a single Consumer Protection Oversight Agency for all utilities and regulated industries.

In the short term, Kenya Kwanza commits to institute an independent inquiry to review all the matters currently being litigated by consumers with a view to arriving at a quick and satisfactory resolution that can also inform the necessary reforms.

E-Mobility

The Kenya Kwanza government will:

• Roll out electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure in all urban areas and along the highways;

• Provide financial and tax incentives for public service vehicles and commercial transporters to convert to electric vehicles;

• Leverage the financial support that will be provided to the boda boda sector, through the Hustler Fund, to develop the nascent electrical vehicle (EV) and motorcycle assembly industry.

Petroleum

Petroleum, which is Kenya’s single largest import, will remain an important fuel for several decades. Price volatility is a challenge for consumers and economic stability. It has been observed rightly that tax is a major factor in the high cost of petroleum products.

Recent fuel price escalation is a combination of two factors, global price shock and failure of the price stabilisation mechanism, the latter on account of fiscal distress. Global prices are out of our control. As noted, Kenya is well-endowed with cheap renewable power resources. Accelerating transition to electric vehicles is a win-win proposition in terms of contributing to Kenyans emission reduction commitment, cheaper transport, and leveraging on the large local and regional motorcycle market (~500,000 units a year) to build an electric vehicle industry.

Kenya Kwanza Commitment

Set up a legal framework to ring-fence the Fuel Stabilisation Fund;

• Set up a legal framework to ring-fence the Fuel Stabilisation Fund;
• Leverage the financial support that will be provided to the boda boda sector through the Hustler Fund to develop the nascent EV motorcycle assembly industry;
• Create incentives for adoption of electric mass transit systems in all cities and towns.

Financial Commitment Sh200 billion (current MTEF commitment) Securitization of Road Levy

SOURCE: Citizen Digital

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