President William Ruto has announced a waiver for electricity connection.
Speaking during meeting with Association of Pension Trustees and Administrators of Kenya on Friday, November 11, Ruto said Kenya Power will no longer charge new customers for electricity connections.
New customers pay at least KSh 70,000 to have electricity cable dropped to their homes.
“Previously, a transformer that ought to serve 30 people was only serving 15 people. Then why not connect everyone for free — in any case the transformer is not being used optimally,” the President said.
Ruto termed the payments unnecessary under his administration, adding that the government is working on supplying electricity with value addition.
In September, Electricity Sector Association of Kenya (ESAK) urged Ruto to consider ways of diversifying investment in the energy sectorin a bid to tame the spiking electricity costs.
ESAK noted that the country has the potential of tapping into diverse energy sectors as it is blessed with natural resources.
“One of the reasons why investment in the energy sector is viable in Kenya is due to the immense potential in the sector
“Kenya is abundantly blessed with natural resources such as wind, abundant supply of rainfall and solar energy. 73 per cent of the country experiences wind speeds of at least 6 m/s or higher,” ESAK chairperson George Aluru noted.
In October, KPLC doubled its net profits in the year that ended June 30, 2022.
According to the company’s end-year results which was released on Thursday, October 27, KPLC’s earnings in the previous year shot down from KSh 1.5 billion to KSh 3.5 billion.
The impressive growth was attributed to growth in sales by at least 6.9 percent and improvement of 1.5 per cent in system efficiency.
The reduction in operation costs by use of strategic cost management initiatives was also attributed to the growth.
The other contributing factor was a 40.2 per cent increment in finance costs, attributable to the depreciation of the Kenya Shilling against major world currencies.
This resulted in a 37.5 per cent decline in gross earnings to settle at 5.12 billion compared to the previous trading period.
“Despite some curve balls, all our core business lines have registered remarkable improvement,” Acting managing director Geoffrey Muli said.