Kenyans are spending up to Sh. 300 billion on betting, alcohol, cigarettes.
According to finances from the largest beer maker EABL, Kenyans bought alcohol worth 71 percent of the gross sales of Sh. 193.85 billion in the 12 months to June 2022.
Although the figures for wines and spirits are not expressly reported, duty collections from the Kenya Revenue Authority show that Kenyans are spending billions on this category of alcohol.
In 2021, the KRA netted Sh. 28.6 billion in excise from beer, and Sh. 16.13 billion in wines and spirits excise, the Economic Survey published by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) shows.
KRA also estimates that it loses about Sh. 12 billion every year in excise duty evasion in the alcohol manufacturing sector.
In the same vein, BAT Kenya made regional gross sales worth Sh. 40 billion. Over 20 billion out of these were from local sales.
Lang’ata T-Mall flyover that cost Sh. 3 billion opened for public use
Already, Kenyans are spending up to Sh. 169 billion betting on M-Pesa. This translates to spending Sh. 463 million every day on bets according to the Safaricom financial results for the year ended March 31.
The financial results show that the value of bets jumped 23.8 per cent from Sh. 136 billion a year earlier. This saw Safaricom’s revenue from betting rise 40 per cent to Sh. 5.98 billion last year.
Betting is now the second-largest business line by revenue under M-Pesa’s business payments after business-to-consumer (B2C), which generated sales of Sh. 11.4 billion in the year to March.
