President William Ruto’s days-old government is faced with a painful situation as fuel prices register the highest spike ever despite riding on a campaign of easing the cost of living for Kenyans.
Super petrol price will now retail at Sh 179 up from Sh 159 even though one of his campaign pledges was to lower the cost of fuel among other commodities used by the general public on a daily basis among them maize meal.
But during his inauguration speech on Tuesday, Ruto announced a policy change that was a departure from his campaign pledges when he said he declared that subsidies on consumer products among them petrol were unsustainable.
He said the focus would be subsidise farm inputs that would then reduce the cost of production and in the end reduce the cost of the products.
This effectively meant that Kenyans should not expect the price of maize meal to go down not until the end of this planting and the harvesting of the same.
The rise of fuel prices will impact on all sectors of the economic and is expected to cause a ripple effect in the increase of the cost of other products including bus fares.
Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (EPRA) said taking into account the weighted average cost of imported refined petroleum products and in line with Government policy to gradually remove subsidy on petroleum fuels, the changes in the maximum allowed petroleum pump prices in Nairobi are as follows: Super Petrol, Diesel and Kerosene increase by KShs 20.18 per litre, KShs 25.00 per litre and KShs 20.00 per litre respectively.
It added that, although the subsidy for super petrol has been removed, a subsidy of Kshs.20.82/litre and Kshs.26.25/litre has been retained for Diesel and Kerosene respectively in order to cushion consumers from the otherwise high prices.
