Sh10.5 billion earmarked for food crisis

The food crisis following the ongoing drought in Kenya’s arid and semi-arid lands will cost Sh10.5 billion, Treasury has said.

Finance Permanent Secretary Joseph Kinyua told Parliament’s Budget Committee that the money had been set aside to help buy food and water for the country’s hunger-stricken population.

The PS, under pressure from MPs Martha Karua (Gichugu, PNU) and Sofia Abdi Noor (Nominated, ODM), revealed that Treasury and specific ministries like that of Water, Special Programmes and Agriculture had already been allocated money in the Budget for drought mitigation.

He said the government had Sh8 billion in its coffers, but had as of last week, still been looking for the Sh2.5 billion, which will be squeezed from the allocations to various specific ministries.

He said the Cabinet had now given the Treasury the greenlight to raid the recurrent expenditure budget in specific ministries.

Mr Kinyua explained that Treasury had withheld Sh2 billion from the ministry of Special Programmes because of “a few challenges” in the ministry regarding the management of the funds in that particular ministry.

The ministry had been allocated Sh2.2 billion to repay its debt it had when it got maize from the Strategic Grain Reserves two years ago to mitigate the famine then.

Ms Sofia Abdi Noor sought to know why Treasury had failed to allocate money to raise the stocks in the Strategic Grain Reserves in the current Budget, but the PS said the priority now was in ensuring that “the hungry people are fed”.

“The purpose of the strategic grain reserves is to allow the country to have food security,” said Mr Kinyua.

He added that it will be pointless to allocate money to shore up reserves, when millions, at least 10 million Kenyans are faced with starvation.

The priority now, he said, was to feed the hungry while the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB) was being restructured, so that once the drought, famine and hunger is sorted out, then the country can focus on food security.

Mr Kinyua said the reforms at the NCPB will focus on getting a mechanism that will allow grain prices to be balanced in the market, at a position “where the prices are profitable to the farmers and also affordable to the public.”

But for now, he said, the ministry of Special Programmes had been allocated an additional Sh3.6 billion for drought mitigation, and that a further Sh5.5 billion had been earmarked in the budgets of specific line ministries like Agriculture, Water and Irrigation, Livestock, and the Treasury.

The PS said the money will be used in the distribution of food and irrigation, but it is not clear if part of the money will be used to import the genetically engineered maize into the country.

The price of maize flour costs Sh140 per two-kilogramme packet and, according to the millers, the cost would most probably reduce after 54,000 tonnes of imports from Malawi and Zambia make it into the country.

Nonetheless, it is harvest time in parts of Nyanza and Western regions in the country, but the government will have to focus on redistributing the harvest to the areas where the maize is needed most.