President William Ruto has announced that his government will be removing all taxes on cooking gas. The announcement is his latest promise to Kenyans.
The president spoke in Mombasa when he launched the construction of a cooking gas plant at the Special Economic Zone in Dongo Kundu, near the port of Mombasa.
“In the next three years, all Kenyan houses will have cooking gas which is way affordable,” President Ruto promised.
“We are going to remove all taxes that are currently being levied on cooking gas so that we can make sure that every household in the Republic of Kenya has access to affordable LPG and we eliminate the wood fuel.”
The cooking gas plant is being set up by Tanzanian billionaire Rostam Aziz who owns Taifa Gas. The plant will have capacity to handle 30,000 tonnes of liquefied petroleum gas. It was earlier estimated to cost $130 million (Sh. 16.25 billion).
This will see Aziz wrestle the cooking gas market from Mombasa-based tycoon Mohamed Jaffer. It is currently estimated that up to 2.87 million households or 23.9 per cent of Kenyan households) use LPG for cooking.
Taifa Gas is currently the largest LPG supply company in Tanzania. The ccompany has also been supplying LPG to Kenya’s retail segment through road transportation.
Tanzanian billionaire to build Sh. 16 billion cooking gas plant in Mombasa
In 2021, Aziz had lamented that Kenyan authorities had gone mute on his 2017 inquiry to build an LPG plant. He had highlighted this silence as a pointer on the barriers for Tanzanian entrepreneurs seeking a presence in Kenya were facing.
There have been fears that the price of cooking gas is going to rise yet again after the government raised taxes on imported LPG by more than Sh. 38,000.
According to the importers, Kenya Revenue Authority imposed the tax without giving them any notice. The KRA increased the levies from $605 (Sh. 70,000) per ton of LPG to $930 (Sh. 108,000) per ton of LPG.
This was equivalent to a jump of 325 dollars per truck, which importers now say they will push down to consumers.
